Financial
Total revenue of the top ten foundries fell by 4,7% for Q4 2022 and will continue to slide further for Q1 2023. Although electronic brands began adjusting their inventories in Q2 2022, foundries were unable to respond rapidly to this development due to them residing in the upper portion of the supply chain, and the fact that revising procurement quantities of long-term foundry contracts takes a considerable amount of time. The downward corrections made to its capacity utilisation rates did not become noticeable until Q4 2022, where the total revenue registered a QoQ decline after 13 consecutive months of growth.
The YoY growth rate of global server shipments for 2023 has been lowered to 1,3% (14,43 million units) as Dell, HPE, and Inspur continue to revise their projections. This is due to the four major North American cloud service providers (CSPs) having made cuts to their server procurement quantities for this year because of high inflation. The revisions highlight that demand for end products has become much weaker than expected.
The global DRAM revenue has fallen by 32,5% QoQ to $12,281 billion for Q4 2022. The main cause of the steep revenue drop in Q4 2022 was the plummeting overall average selling price. DRAM suppliers experienced a rapid accumulation of inventory in Q3 2022 due to a freeze in buyers’ demand. Subsequently, suppliers were much more energetic in price negotiations for Q4 2022 contracts as they were struggling for market share. Among the major categories of DRAM products, server DRAM suffered the sharpest price drop in Q4 2022. Contract prices of DDR4 and DDR5 server DRAM products registered QoQ drops of 23 to 28% and 30 to 35% respectively.
The top three DRAM suppliers Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron all posted a significant QoQ drop in revenue for Q4 2022. Samsung was the most aggressive in the price competition during the quarter, so it was able to raise shipments despite the general demand slump. Samsung’s DRAM revenue came to US$5,54 billion with a QoQ decline of 25,1%. Even with this result, Samsung had the smallest revenue drop among the top three and SK Hynix posted a QoQ drop of 35,2%.
Shipments of AI servers is set to climb at a CAGR of 10,8% from 2022 to 2026. According to the latest survey of the server market by TrendForce, many cloud service providers (CSPs) have begun large-scale investments in the equipment that supports AI technologies. This development is in response to the emergence of new applications such as self-driving cars, artificial intelligence of things (AIoT), and edge computing. Four major North American CSPs (Google, AWS, Meta, and Microsoft) together held the largest share of the annual total AI server demand in 2022, accounting for 66,2% of the annual global procurement quantity.
Companies
Vicor corporation has announced a global distribution agreement with Avnet. The agreement expands access to Vicor’s power modules through Avnet’s design and supply chain, enabling global customers to achieve innovation with higher system performance and greater scalability. This global franchise agreement is effective immediately and customers across EMEA will have access to the Vicor product portfolio via Avnet Abacus.
Indium Corporation has announced that its engineers have achieved 100% SMTA certification and a historic high score on the certified surface mount technology process engineer certification. The company now has 36 SMTA certified employees. Its technical engineer, Carson Burt, achieved an impressive score of 98%, the highest in SMTA history.
NeoCortec, manufacturer of ultra-low-power bi-directional wireless mesh network modules, has signed a new distribution agreement with service-oriented distributor, Endrich Bauelemente Vetriebs GmbH. The new agreement enables Endrich to promote NeoCortec’s NeoMesh wireless mesh network modules worldwide, together with NeoCortec’s protocol stack, to its broad customer base.
TDK Corporation was recently named a Clarivate Top 100 Global Innovator 2023 for its innovation and leadership in digital transformation (DX) and energy transformation (EX) for the smart society. TDK is proud to have now spent nine years on this prestigious list.
NGK, Energous and e-peas have collaborated to spread the use of wireless power transmission (WPT) systems. NGK will support the development of edge device manufacturers who work on WPT systems by developing the providing IoT devices that combine NGK’s lithium-ion rechargeable battery ‘EnerCera’ with the technology of Energous and e-peas.
South Africa’s finance minister announced several measures aimed at addressing the energy crisis in the 2023 National Budget Speech. Predicting whether these measures will be enough, however, is a difficult task given the complex problem at hand. Besides the R254 billion earmarked to contribute towards Eskom’s debt, investing in renewable energy, upgrading old infrastructure, promoting energy efficiency, and increasing private sector participation will all play a significant role in alleviating the energy shortage currently faced.
In related news, repairs to Kusile’s flue duct is estimated to take 10 months once the required permission has been granted by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment to bypass emission criteria. This will bring three units back online which are currently not operational and have added two stages to the continuous nationwide rotational power cuts being experienced. The plan entails the erection of temporary flues for the unit. Permission to bypass the emissions criteria was submitted on 2 March 2023 [Ed: almost five months after the collapse of the flue duct].
The US’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has received authorisation from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart its nuclear reactor. The NIST Centre for Neutron Research reactor has been shut down since 3 February 2021, when a single fuel element overheated and was damaged after not being securely latched into place. The NIST reactor is used only for research purposes and operates at lower power, temperature and pressure conditions than a utility reactor used in electricity generation.
Technologies
It has been predicted by TrendForce that the market for SiC (silicon carbide) and GaN (gallium nitride) will surpass $2,2 billion in 2023. This is largely due to the growing demand related to electric vehicles and renewable energy, and reflects a YoY growth of 41,4%. As a semiconductor material, SiC is suitable for applications that require high voltages and high current levels, and currently account for about 80% of the total power devices market value. Therefore, the adoption of SiC power devices will further improve the efficiency of electric vehicles and renewable energy systems.
History has been made in battery technology with a joint venture between the JAC Group and Volkswagen producing the first electric vehicle powered by a sodium-ion battery. The passenger vehicle is fitted with a 25 kWh Na-ion battery that allows for up to 250 km on a full charge. While sodium-ion batteries have a lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, they have other advantages, such as better low-temperature performance and charging speed, a longer lifespan, and can be recharged more times without degradation. They are also less prone to overheating, making them a safer option for large-scale energy storage.
An ambitious collaborative project to power subsea equipment with wave power and subsea energy storage has taken to the seas in the north of Scotland. The £2 million demonstrator project, called Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP), has connected the Blue X wave energy converter – built by Edinburgh company Mocean Energy – with a Halo underwater battery developed by Aberdeen intelligent energy management specialists Verlume. The two technologies have been deployed in the seas off Orkney and have now begun a minimum four-month test programme where they will provide low-carbon power and communication to infrastructure, including Baker Hughes’ subsea controls equipment and a resident underwater autonomous vehicle provided by Transmark Subsea. The project aims to show how green technologies can be combined to provide reliable low-carbon power and communications to subsea equipment, offering a cost-effective alternative to umbilical cables, which are carbon intensive, with long lead times to procure and install.
Samtec has successfully demonstrated a new cable backplane system that achieved 56 Gbps PAM4, while subject to dynamic cable flexing. The demonstration took place at DesignCon 2023 where visitors could actively bend Samtec’s twinax cable by playing a back-and-forth arcade game while measurements were being taken. The test system consisted of Alphawave Semi’s long reach SERDES generating 56 Gbps PAM4 PRBS31 data at the transmitter. These signals travel to a Samtec Bulls Eye test cable system, through low-loss coax to a NovaRay cable system, and then to an ExaMAX cable backplane connector system using 4 metres of 30-gauge twinax cable, which is where the flexing took place.
Orolia, an electronics and defence company, has announced that Skydel, its flagship GNSS simulation engine software, can generate more than 500 signals from a single platform. By leveraging its software-defined architecture, Skydel’s potential can be massively scaled upwards when employing a robust set of hardware components. GNSS users, experts,
and manufacturers, and those looking for an LEO-capable simulation system, can greatly benefit from this unmatched number of signals. Skydel contains a feature set that includes multi-constellation/multi-frequency signal generation, remote control from user-defined scripts, and integrated interference generation.
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version