1/ TI significantly lowered the price of PMIC to seize market

Recently, there have been rumors that starting from May 2023, Texas Instruments (TI) has comprehensively lowered chip prices for the Chinese market, trying to grab more market share through price wars. An executive of a domestic analog chip factory revealed that TI has no fixed range and bottom line for this price cut.

The report pointed out that since the second half of 2022, with the decline in demand in the global semiconductor market and the expansion of related production capacity, the supply of major chip manufacturers such as TI has long since ceased to be tight, and even the inventory level has continued to rise. Therefore, in order to reduce inventory and even further grab market share, TI has carried out this price reduction action. Among them, general-purpose analog chips are the most affected, and the impact on the more scattered various special-purpose analog chip markets is uneven. Among them, the power management chip (PMIC) and the signal chain chip are the hardest hit areas affected by the price reduction strategy.

According to media reports, TI's PMIC price reduction in Taiwan, China, is 20%-30%, which is very rare for TI, the leader in analog chips, and fully reflects the severe situation in the industry. Professionals predict that Texas Instruments' price reduction strategy will be highlighted in this year's Q2 performance as soon as possible in China.

2/ NVIDIA AI GPUs are in short supply, H100 OEM Hon Hai grabs 90%

According to the Digitimes, the relevant supply chain stated that the system OEM manufacturers of Nvidia A100/A800/H100 are Wistron and Hon Hai, and the current orders are about half, but the proportion of OEMs in the second half will be adjusted. H100 is currently Hon Hai. It accounts for about 60% and will increase to 90% in the second half of the year, while A100 is dominated by Wistron.

The ChatGPT market is booming. According to the relevant supply chain, Nvidia has almost monopolized the most popular AI GPU market and has benefited the most, followed by TSMC, which alone holds wafer foundry orders.

Thanks to the sales of artificial intelligence and ChatGPT's fiery GPU chips, Nvidia's sales and net profit in the first quarter exceeded Wall Street analysts' expectations, and the company's outlook for the second quarter also far exceeded expectations.

3/ Global memory chips are expected to pick up in June

According to the "www.cls.cn" report, a person in the storage supply chain said: "In fact, the price of memory and SSD is basically the lowest point of the whole year in June every year, so the price of memory chips is still falling, but we generally believe that June will usher in a recovery."

Many people in the industry said that the current selling price of memory chips has been lower than or close to the cost price, and there is no room for decline. People in the industry judge that the reason for the price increase of memory chips is not the surge in demand, but the effect of destocking measures, and the price has dropped to freezing point, resulting in changes in procurement demand.

4/ Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel to Participate in RISE Alliance

According to Business Korea, Samsung Electronics announced on June 1 that it will serve as a steering committee member of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE), an open source software development project initiated by the non-profit Linux Foundation to Using RISC-V to develop software, participants include global IT and semiconductor giants such as Samsung Electronics, Nvidia, Intel, Google, and Qualcomm.

Previously, most semiconductor companies used ARM services, but some companies believe that ARM has abused its position by raising licensing fees and mandating the use of its designs. RISC-V has been evaluated as the best alternative to ARM.

5/ TrendForce：AI server shipments expected to increase 38.4% annually in 2023

The research institution TrendForce released a forecast a few days ago, pointing out that as the demand for AI servers and AI chips is simultaneously bullish, it is estimated that the shipments of AI servers (including main chips such as GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs) will be close to 1.2 million units in 2023, an annual increase of 38.4%. Accounting for nearly 9% of the overall server shipments, the proportion will further increase to 15% by 2026. The agency simultaneously revised up the compound annual growth rate of AI server shipments from 2022 to 2026 to 22%, and AI chips will be released in 2023. Volumes are expected to grow by 46%.

TrendForce said that Nvidia GPUs have become the mainstream of chips used in AI servers, accounting for about 60-70% of the market, followed by ASIC chips independently developed by cloud computing manufacturers, accounting for more than 20% of the market.

6/ AI-driven GPU, advanced chip shortage

The global chip industry has been suffering from high inventory levels due to weak demand, but inventories of advanced chips, especially graphics chips (GPUs), are rapidly depleting, according to the Korea Daily Economic News.

With the outbreak of artificial intelligence, it has triggered a shortage of GPUs and capacity expansion of big data and server operators, which is not only beneficial to GPU maker Nvidia, but also to high-capacity DRAM chip manufacturers such as Samsung and SK Hynix.

According to the data, as of the end of March, the value of Nvidia's GPU inventory was US$4.61 billion, a decrease of 10.6% from the end of December. This is the company's first inventory decline since the fourth quarter of 2019.

With the rise of ChatGPT, the surge in demand led to a shortage of GPU and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) DRAM chips.

7/ TrendForce: LED Lighting Chip Price Increase by 3~5%

TrendForce released a LED lighting market research report on June 1. Due to the obvious decline in global LED terminal demand in 2022, the LED lighting, LED display and other markets will continue to slump, resulting in a decrease in the utilization rate of upstream LED chip production capacity, an oversupply in the market, and product prices continue to fall.

Research shows that the drop in volume and price will lead to a 23% year-on-year decrease in the output value of the global LED lighting chip market in 2022, to only US$2.78 billion. However, in 2023, with the recovery of the industry, this year's output value is expected to reach 2.92 billion US dollars, achieving growth.

According to TrendForce, LED commercial lighting is the fastest-recovering field in the LED market. Recently, some LED manufacturers have adopted price hike measures. The main price increase items are concentrated in lighting LED chips, with an area of less than 300 mils (mil²). The following (included) low-power lighting chip items have the most price increases, with an increase of about 3~5%; special sizes can increase by up to 10%.

8/ South Korea's semiconductor exports in May fell 36.2% year-on-year

On June 1, South Korea's Ministry of Industry, Trade and Energy (MOTIE) announced that South Korea's exports in May were US$52.2 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 15.2%, which has fallen for the eighth consecutive month; imports were US$54.3 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 14.0%. The trade deficit was $2.1 billion.

Among them, due to the reduction in global demand, semiconductor shipments have declined, and semiconductor exports have declined with the decline in prices of products such as DRAM, a year-on-year decrease of 36.2% compared with last year's US$11.5 billion; South Korea's display exports fell by 7.4% in May, but OLED exports fell by 7%. In addition, exports of solid-state drives (SSDs) for computers fell as demand for consumer products such as personal computers (PCs) and notebooks shrank and investment in servers slowed.