According to foreign reports, sources said the US mobile chip maker Qualcomm on Tuesday night to the Seoul Central District Court proceedings, requiring the court to terminate the South Korean antitrust authorities Fair Trade Commission (FTC) made an unfair ruling late last year.

Wednesday is also the South Korean Fair Trade Commission had set a statutory deadline. In the Commission to send Qualcomm to improve the official documents at the same time, has provided Qualcomm 30 days to decide whether to appeal. pps272

At the end of December last year, the Fair Trade Commission imposed a 1.03 trillion won ($ 854 million) antitrust fine on Qualcomm, setting the highest penalty for Korean antitrust history. The committee said at the time that Qualcomm’s dominance in the mobile chip market forced South Korea’s mobile phone manufacturers to pay some unnecessary royalties. And also rejects or restricts the use of its standard patented technology to competitors in the field of chip manufacturing (such as Samsung Electronics), hampering fair competition. It was alleged that the Commission had received complaints from industry companies in 2014 and launched an antitrust investigation of Qualcomm.

The Fair Trade Commission requires QUALCOMM to correct its business practices and to consult with the chip maker’s counterparts on patent licensing issues in real terms, without making unfair requests, such as limiting which authorized customers can sell chips to potential customers. In addition, Qualcomm was also canceled in the mobile phone manufacturers signed with the modem chip sales agreement on some should not charge the patent too much of the request. If the mobile phone manufacturers to re-negotiate on the terms of the contract, Qualcomm must agree. lm2936mp-5.0/nopb

Qualcomm denied the allegations and said it would apply for a moratorium on the rectification order of the Fair Trade Commission and appeal to the Seoul High Court in respect of the decision. Qualcomm also expressed serious disagreement with the decision announced by the Fair Trade Commission that the decision violated the facts and laws and violated the rights set forth by the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS).

Samsung Group, the actual controller of the last week because of allegedly to the South Korean President Pu Gui Hui girlfriend bribes were arrested, he was charged with the government in exchange for its inheritance. The prosecution is also investigating the impact of Samsung Group on the Korea Fair Trade Commission, and in January last year, just retired as vice chairman of the agency Kim Hak-hyun to inquire. Don Rosenberg, General Counselor of Qualcomm, said on Monday that “this erroneous decision stems from an unfair process, which we believe has been a significant impact on business interests.” The recent survey of the Samsung Group and the Fair Trade Commission The report of the former president ‘s relationship raises our high concern that the vice – chairman is in charge of our case.

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics each year to be paid to Qualcomm 1.5 trillion won royalties. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission ruling results, is conducive to Korean companies to reduce the royalties paid to Qualcomm.

Up to now, Qualcomm Korea has not commented on this report. “Qualcomm’s dispute with the Korea Fair Trade Commission will focus on whether Qualcomm will pay patent fees unfairly to Korean manufacturers and whether the fair trade committee’s fines are accurate,” the source said.

Semiconductor industry chain shortage of goods continued to spread.

Universal crystal yesterday held a temporary shareholders, for the recent semiconductor silicon wafer prices, chairman Xu Xiulan expected this year, supply and demand gap of about 3-5% next year to further expand to 7-8%, the next two years is still in short supply, can be expected This year the annual price trend of product prices will be quite healthy, 12-inch wafer or 8-inch larger than the second quarter, part of the silicon wafer rose more than 2-digit range.

She said last year, the average price of semiconductor silicon wafer per inch is 0.67 US dollars, the lowest in the past 11 years, the last quarter is lower than 0.67 US dollars, but this situation has improved significantly in January. lm317dcyr

Xu Xiulan said that the first quarter of semiconductor silicon wafer supply tight, because many customers are beginning to talk about the price of the end of the year, so the fastest price began to reflect the second quarter is expected in the second quarter silicon wafer gains will be quite obvious, some silicon wafer gains have the opportunity Up to 2 digits, 8-inch silicon wafer is also estimated that there are single-digit gains.

Xu Xiulan stressed that the overall market supply remains unchanged, semiconductor silicon fabs do not intend to expand production capacity, only to the bottleneck of the process, and demand in the fab capacity continued out, advanced process demand for rapid growth, pushing up the overall silicon Wafer demand rose, this year the overall supply side is still tight, demand continues to grow.

She expected, driven by psychological factors, the next two years is still expected to maintain the demand for silicon wafer is greater than the supply situation, supply and demand gap this year, about 3-5% next year, estimated at 7-8%.

Xu Xiulan pointed out that some of the silicon wafer demand this year, the price is expected to go up quarter by quarter, and some will be slightly revised and then continue to rise, the overall trend of silicon wafer prices is expected throughout the year will be quite healthy. qpi-5lz

In the production capacity, Xu Xiulan expected to last year’s average annual average price of 0.67 US dollars per inch wafer is expected to be more than 0.9 US dollars, including the world’s crystal and other silicon wafer manufacturers will consider expansion.

In addition, the cost of construction is now quite high, the construction of a monthly production capacity of 100,000 12-inch semiconductor silicon fab, at least 300 million US dollars, coupled with environmental standards through the relevant process and advanced process testing equipment, the overall construction Plant costs will look at 400 million US dollars, the manufacturers, the average unit price of silicon wafers is still low, coupled with the scale of revenue is not enough to make up for the depreciation of the stall, it is expected that all manufacturers will not actively expand production, Will choose to go to the bottleneck of the priority.

TDK fade out, MLCC also joined formation

In addition to silicon, the recent multi-layer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) supply chain also broke the supply of a serious shortage of prospects in the first quarter of 2017, the season may be caught in the supply of scarce situation, the legal circle rumors, the current MLCC supply gap is basically Came to 5%.

According to JAPAN ECONOMIC CENTER, a 2017 multi-layer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) outlook report, general AV devices such as mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, personal computers, etc., use a large global multi-layer ceramic capacitor , In 2017 will rise to 552.1 billion, compared with 2016, 2017 MLCC demand forecast will increase again 10.6 billion.

Traditionally, passive components MLCC is the Japanese manufacturers such as Murata (Murata), TDK, the sun induced the world, but in recent years, South Korea’s electronics factory, such as Samsung Motor (SEMCO) actively rush, MLCC market price competition has long been commonplace, But recently because MLCC profits have been very low to kill, the market demand began to return to temperature, so the MLCC bargain seems to have begun to bottom out.

The MLCC market profit margins in the past few years quickly narrowed, but also makes the Japanese manufacturers TDK came in mid-last year will fade out of the general MLCC market, TDK MLCC market is currently the fifth largest supplier, and TDK fade out , Which may make the MLCC supply side of a serious scarcity.

According to the legal community forecast, from the global multi-layer ceramic capacitor capacity is limited, if the Apple iPhone 8 in the second quarter ahead of the stock tide, coupled with the automotive electronics MLCC market demand, estimated MLCC supply and demand situation Will be more tight.

Apple’s main MLCC supplier for the Murata, the sun induced, Samsung MLCC high-end manufacturing plant, and Taiwan plant MLCC supply chain giant, Huaxin Branch, the side, Wo stretch hall is the main low-order main.

Huaxin Branch, for example, 2016 Huaxin Branch owned by the parent company net profit, up to NT $ 2,152 million, the annual growth rate jumped 78.5%, legal person said, Huaxin Branch 2016 MLCC shipments, chips Resistance and other shipments are quite robust, so driven by substantial growth last year.

While another passive component of the country giant, last year’s revenue is also a record high record, to 29.617 billion yuan, annual growth rate of 7.65%.

Recently, the latest development of 3D NAND memory R & D projects jointly undertaken by the National Storage Base, the Yangtze River Storage Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the “Yangtze River Storage”) and the Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to the CEO of the Yangtze River Storage CEO Yang Shining in the IC coffee first international wisdom technology industry summit (ICTech Summit 2017) introduced, 32-layer 3D NAND chip successfully passed the electrical characteristics of the indicators test, to achieve the desired requirements.

The memory chip developed by the Yangtze River Storage and Microelectronics three-dimensional memory R & D center, in the microelectronics three-dimensional memory R & D center director, the Yangtze River storage NAND technology research and development project senior technical director Huo Zongliang under the leadership of the successful realization of the process devices and circuits Design of the entire set of technical verification, to the industrialization of the road has taken a symbolic significance of the key step.

Driven by large data needs, the memory chip is the field of electronic information to occupy the largest market share of integrated circuit products. China’s long-term in the field of memory chips facing the market demand and independent intellectual property rights and the lack of key technology difficulties, to carry out large-capacity storage technology research and related product development is imminent. Traditional flat NAND memory reduces bottlenecks while reducing cost and increasing bit-to-bit crosstalk between devices. Seeking storage technology step by step breakthrough and innovation, is the development of the next generation of memory mainstream ideas. mqpi-18lp

3D NAND is an innovative semiconductor storage technology that increases the storage density by increasing the storage stack rather than reducing the two-dimensional size of the device, thereby broadening the storage space for storage technology, but the high complexity of its structure brings new challenge. Through the unremitting efforts, the technical team to overcome the high aspect ratio etching, high selection than etching, laminated film deposition, storage layer formation, metal gate formation and double exposure of metal lines and other key technical difficulties, to achieve multi-layer stack structure of 3D NAND array lay a solid foundation.

The reliability of the memory is an important part of the impact of product quality, the main assessment features include durability, data retention characteristics, coupling and disturbance, the international field of 3D NAND public research results are very limited. The device team through a large number of experiments and data analysis, to find a variety of factors affecting the reliability of various factors, and work closely with the technical team to complete the optimization of the reliability of the device indicators, the final success of the realization of all the reliability parameters.

At the circuit design level, the integrated R & D of stacked three-dimensional arrays faces more complex technical problems than planar NAND, and needs to be analyzed and optimized in combination with three-dimensional devices and array structure. The design team modeled the three-dimensional storage structure, using the programming based on the number of layers to read, read the voltage configuration, compensate for the device characteristics with the array of physical structure of the distribution differences, reducing the impact of unit crosstalk. And, the application of a number of innovative advanced design technology to ensure that the chip to achieve product-level features and performance indicators. lm3s2412-iqc25-a2

3D NAND memory chip research and development work has been the National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund, Violet Holdings, Hubei Province, China Core Investment, Hubei Province, the strong support of the vote.

German lighting manufacturers OSRAM (OSRAM) lighting business subsidiary “LEDVANCE” sale case, recently by the German government authorities review and release, and now again by the US Overseas Investment Committee (CFIUS) approved the consent of the next to the Chinese regulatory authorities Nodded, Mu Linsen and other Chinese capital is expected to complete the transaction as scheduled this year.

OSRAM announced in July 2016, its independent subsidiary LEDVANCE will be sold to the joint bidding team, including China LED packaging manufacturers Wood Linsen, China Strategic Investment Corporation IDG Capital, and Yiwu City, the capital of the capital operation center tripod, the amount of transactions Up to 400 million euros. After the German government took into account the transaction caused by the outflow of technology, endangering national security, and thus to block and restart the review process. bsm25gd120d2

After more than three months of review, because the process did not find any evidence that the national security and public order will pose a threat, the German authorities will issue a “no proof of harm” release, only in the United States CFIUS and the Chinese authorities approved Before the case there are still uncertain factors exist. However, according to “Reuters” (Reuters) quoted the OSRAM spokesman said that the case has recently been approved by CFIUS, is now approved by the Chinese regulatory authorities can be formally adopted.

The deal was originally expected to complete the transaction in 2017 fiscal year, once approved by the Chinese regulatory approval, it is expected to be completed as scheduled transactions, when OSRAM will officially out of its revenue 2 billion euros lighting business, the future will focus on development Car lighting, intelligent lighting, special lighting and other high-margin and high-tech threshold market.

After the acquisition to change the LED pattern?

OSRAM lighting of the acquisition finally dust ended. Led by IDG Capital, China’s LED manufacturers Mu Lin Sen and Yiwu state-owned capital operations center and other Chinese consortium, the cost of 400 million euros to buy the OSRAM lighting business LEDVANCE. TrendForce LED technology industry brand LEDinside (China LED Online) Research Association reported that Ouyang said that the acquisition of OSRAM lighting highlights the international manufacturers have to look from the prospects for poor prospects for the development of LED lighting, the Chinese mainland LED lighting Manufacturers are through cost advantages and government support, LED lighting market in the future continue to sit big. udz8812

According to LEDinside statistics, in 2015 the world’s general lighting output value reached 82 billion US dollars (excluding cars and other special lighting), including LED lighting output value of about 25.6 billion US dollars, the overall LED penetration has reached 31%. But also because of the LED lighting penetration continues to rise, coupled with intense LED lighting industry, leading to the international manufacturers have abandoned the original has been operating a hundred years of lighting business.

According to public information, as one of the world’s three major lighting companies OSRAM, business consists of five major components: CLB (traditional lighting and ballasts), LLS (LED lights and systems), L & S (lamps and solutions) (OSRAM) and Sylvania (Ximiannian), and covers about 150 countries of the huge Sales channels.

In Europe, for example, 2015 revenue of up to 6.1 billion US dollars, if deducted OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, and automotive and other special lighting applications, lighting and lighting systems business revenue reached 3.2 billion US dollars. Compared to the general lighting market size, OSRAM’s market share of about 3.8%, the world’s second place. However, the future Osram light source business LEDVANCE spin-off after the future OSRAM brand in the general lighting market share will be a significant decline. The overall company’s operating objectives will also be transformed to higher gross margin LED components, automotive and special lighting. You can see the lighting manufacturers have been abandoned in the past to grab the market share, into the high value-added areas of development strategy.

With the transaction, OSRAM and MURINSON also reached a strategic supply agreement, to be OSRAM’s LED chip plant in Malaysia began operation, MORINSON will be the annual order of OSRAM to buy a large number of LED chips. For OSRAM, the sale of light source business to the wood forest to ensure that the future of their own LED chip outlet. For the wood Linsen, the new LEDVANCE will use OSRAM’s patented chip, coupled with the cost of the advantages of LED packaging, and then Osram and Sylvania brand in the lighting market siege, will accelerate the development of Chinese manufacturers in the field of lighting Market share, resulting in a win-win synergies.

China’s foreign investment is facing the challenges of foreign investment With the country’s strong economic development, Chinese companies in foreign mergers and acquisitions are increasingly active in response to their growth and development needs. Due to the global financial crisis and the degree of economic development and other factors, the United States has always been the focus of these foreign investment activities in the market. However, some Chinese companies involved in aviation, defense, Internet technology and telecommunications are facing challenges in approving the approval of the US Foreign Investment Committee (CFIUS) when they plan to invest or acquire US companies.

Before the purple group of Western Digital investment, because the United States CFIUS obstruction ended.

As an inter-agency committee of the US government, CIUS is composed of representatives from nine federal agencies, including the Ministry of Defense, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and is personally supported by the Minister of Finance. If a foreigner’s “acquisition and acquisition” makes the US company or its assets controlled by foreign countries, the President of the United States has the right to investigate the impact of these mergers on national security.

All along, CFIUS has been authorized to review and investigate these transactions. Intra-investment or acquisition transactions subject to CFIUS review include US company assets, products, services or technology transactions that are considered to cause national security concerns or involve US key infrastructure.

In general, any investment that exceeds 10% of a US company’s equity, voting control or voting rights may trigger CFIUS’s review, and what is a critical infrastructure definition for national security concerns Extensive, need to be determined as a case.

For the urgent need for the development of China’s semiconductor, CFIUS is the biggest obstacle to China’s capital overseas mergers and acquisitions

Taiwanese smartphone chip maker MediaTek, in its high-performance, low-power application processor expertise will help car manufacturers and first-line industry to develop advanced digital cockpit system faith convincing, is a drill Into the growing automotive electronics market.

MediaTek and Qualcomm have the same smart phone application processor technology advantage, so that the background of the two companies to actively arm the military electronics market. Qualcomm, through the acquisition of NXP Semiconductors to expose its plans for the market to throw a shock bomb. The MediaTek is to choose a more organic approach, but also is facing a tough battle. MediaTek’s ambition to enter the automotive market is easy to understand, but the car with the market’s success will still need to wait and see. mg300j2ys50

At this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), JC Hsu, General Manager of MediaTek’s new business development division, introduced the company’s layout in the automotive electronics industry. Xu Jingquan stressed in the interview that the strength of MediaTek is not only telematics and multimedia technology, the secret weapon of winning other 77-79GH millimeter wave (mmW) radar, advanced driving support system (ADAS) camera and ultra-low power Of the visual SoC technology.

Of course, Qualcomm later in the year to complete NXP’s acquisition plan, is expected to be a sharp lead in the automotive electronics, MediaTek will also face a severe test. The face of the upcoming challenges, Xu Jingquan all do not worry. “Our customers in every field are industry leaders, including radar, video cameras and visual SoCs,” he stressed.

MediaTek intends to take advantage of the processor, high integration SoC, modems and RF and multimedia technology advantages into the automotive electronics market

CMOS radar single chip

According to market research agency IHS Markit Automotive research report, radar technology is to enhance the performance of ADAS system, the most commonly used sensor technology, is expected in 2021 radar sensor market will grow to more than 50 million sets Of the scale. fp50r12ks4c

“The experience of MediaTek in 802.11ad technology, which operates in the 60GHz band of unlicensed, multi-gigabit wireless transmission technology, and the associated IP developed with IBM, will come in handy when developing radar chips,” he said. . ”

The disadvantage of using the 60-GHz band is that the signal can not penetrate the solid material and can therefore only be restricted to a separate room. Thus, IBM and MediaTek will use the military phase array radar technology microfilm into a single chip, so that 60GHz transmitter can bypass the obstacle to send signals to the indoor receiver, improve the signal can not penetrate the solid transmission problem. Xu Jingquan explained: “Today, we use a similar technology IP R & D vehicle radar chip.”

As the cost is too high, MediaTek’s radar chip will not use silicon germanium (SiGe), but the introduction of CMOS single-chip SoC, is expected to be the first half of this year can be kind. The benefits of single-chip integration can be reduced BOM cost and radar power consumption.

Xu Jingquan said that its short-range single-chip SoC power consumption will be less than 2W, while supporting medium-distance transmission (about 80 meters) of single-chip, power consumption is only 2-3W. “Therefore, we are currently working closely with a first-tier manufacturers.”

Radar Technology Controversy

Of course, MediaTek in radar technology there are many places to work hard, especially in the face of Infineon Technologies (Infineon Technologies) and NXP, the two industry leaders.

Infineon has pointed out that the company just in 2016 had already sold 10 million radar chips, in addition, accumulated in 2015 before the chip sales reached 10 million, the data can clearly see the radar technology In the past year’s car market is how red.

Infineon’s current radar chip uses silicon germanium (SiGe), while the use of CMOS technology version is currently being developed. NXP launched at the beginning of this year’s CES known as “the world’s smallest, with ultra-high resolution 77GHz radar transceiver single-chip (7.5×7.5mm)”.

Hella, a first-tier automotive radar company with more than 15 years of experience in automotive radar, showed at NXP’s booth that the company will launch Compact Radar in 2018 with NXP’s RF CMOS technology.

Compact Radar will be used for short-range and medium-distance transmission applications, Hella original equipment, global marketing manager Kristian Doescher said: “We have completed the field test, preliminary results Hao show great prospects.RF CMOS technology allows us to Product size reduction. ”

Visual SoC: HOG and CNN

In the field of visual SoCs, Israel’s Mobileye has a leading position in the automotive vision chip market. The EyeQ chip developed by the company is also the gold standard for other companies to design, and it is not easy for the latecomers to contend with it. .

However, Xu Jingquan see this in the MediaTek opportunities. More and more automotive OEMs are now looking for a more resilient architecture when developing visual SoCs. “Some OEMs need more sophisticated image sensor related technologies to implement their sensor fusion in order to add their own algorithms.”

“Our chips will support two image processing technologies – one that focuses on traditional computer vision algorithms, such as the” Directional Gradient Histogram “(HOG), and the other on the visual SoC, which is currently being developed by MediaTek. One is focused on deep learning based on convolutional neural network (CNN) technology, and MediaTek also plans to add special local memory to the SoC to support neural networks. The visual SoC will sample in early 2018.

But why add the same computer vision and depth-of-learning technology to the same chip at the same time? “Deep learning technology can not solve every problem, and we are currently working with first-line customers to develop two technologies to meet their deeper system design needs,” said Xu.

Android system into the car system

Xu Jingquan pointed out that more and more emerging market, car manufacturers began to support the Android car infotainment system (IVI) interested in “they want to make good use of smart phones and tablet computers have been established for the existing ecosystem.

However, when asked about the Android application fragmented differences for the automotive electronics industry may bring adverse effects, Xu Jingquan confessed that there will be some worry.

MediaTek from 2014 to develop automotive electronics market-related technologies. “We currently have more than 100 employees in the automotive electronics sector – most of them engineers and some business people,” says Xu.

Research agency DIGITIMESResearch estimated 2017 annual global high-brightness LED output value of the annual growth rate of 2.8%, reaching 13.18 billion US dollars. LED industry growth momentum in 2014 reached its peak, the next few years into a gradual slowdown. To use the number of stars, 2017 will reach 3,037.5 billion, the annual growth rate of 23.9%, of which the highest annual growth rate will remain for lighting applications, up to 39.2%.

LED proportion of the proportion of use, 2017 lighting applications will account for 66%, Mobile device (mainly for mobile phones) with LED light source and large size LED backlight with a total of 20.8%, the display board and car With LED were 5.6%, 4.7%. proximity sensor

LED to use the number of annual growth rate of view, in 2017 were positive growth in order from high to low lighting, automotive, display billboards, TV backlight, Mobile device applications; the relative negative growth include Tablet, NB, Monitor, the annual reduction rate of between 5.2 to 11.9%. icm-20689

Among them, the growth rate of 2017 double-digit growth will be the application of lighting and automotive, of which the annual growth rate of lighting will reach 39.2%, estimated 2017 global LED lighting market will reach 40.42 billion US dollars, the penetration rate will be 36.7 / RTI & gt; Automotive applications, the main reason for the use of LED lights outside the light source increased the proportion of the application rate is expected to reach 15.3%.