Micron products are being discontinued and silicon wafer contract prices are loosening

1. Micron's products sold in China have not passed the network security review

According to the news released on the WeChat official account of "NetEase China" on May 21, the Cyber Security Review Office conducted a cyber security review on the products sold by Meguiar Light in China in accordance with the law.

The review found that Meiguang Company's products have serious network security risks, posing significant security risks to China's critical information infrastructure supply chain and affecting national security. Therefore, the Cybersecurity Review Office has lawfully concluded that it will not pass the cybersecurity review.

According to laws and regulations such as the Cybersecurity Law, operators of critical information infrastructure in China should stop purchasing products from Micron Corporation. The purpose of conducting a network security review of Meiguang Company's products is to prevent product network security issues from endangering the security of critical national information infrastructure, which is a necessary measure to maintain national security. China is firmly promoting high-level opening-up to the outside world. As long as it complies with Chinese laws and regulations, it welcomes enterprises and various platform products and services from various countries to enter the Chinese market.

2. Loose contract prices for silicon wafers, manufacturers expanding production or slowing down

According to the Taiwan, China Economic Daily quoted by the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, the semiconductor market recovery was not as expected, gradually impacting the upstream silicon wafer market. The silicon wafer factory has also seen some size contract prices loosen, following previous requests from long-term customers to delay the delivery of goods. Looking ahead to the overall market situation, silicon wafer manufacturers have admitted that the business situation is not as expected, and the supply chain inventory level is too high. It is possible that it may not bottom out until the third quarter and begin to slowly stabilize.

Industry insiders believe that due to the poor memory market and the high inventory of silicon wafers in wafer foundries, if the market downturn continues, the speed of silicon wafer factory capacity expansion may slow down in the future.

3. Application materials: Storage customer spending is at its lowest level in over a decade

According to the Taiwan, China Electronic Times quoted by the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, the sales of applied materials of major semiconductor equipment manufacturers in the second fiscal quarter of 2023 increased by 6.2% year-on-year to US $6.63 billion, higher than the US $6.37 billion expected by analysts earlier. The operating profit margin was 29.1%, a year-on-year decrease of 1.5%.

Looking ahead to this quarter, Applied Materials believes that sales will decline, but the decline may not be as drastic as analysts generally worry. It is expected that the sales in the third quarter will reach approximately $6.15 billion (fluctuating up and down by $400 million). According to Applied Materials, customer spending on memory is at its lowest level in over a decade, but the demand for equipment needed to produce chips in the automotive and industrial markets remains quite strong, helping to offset the impact of slower orders for smartphones and PC chip devices.

NXP and TSMC will jointly launch the first 16nm automotive embedded MRAM

On May 16th, NXP and TSMC jointly announced the launch of the industry's first automotive embedded magnetic random access memory (MRAM) using 16nm FinFET technology.

MRAM can update 20MB of code in about 3 seconds, compared to the current standard flash memory which takes about 1 minute. This can minimize downtime caused by software updates and help car manufacturers eliminate bottlenecks caused by long module programming times. MRAM can also provide up to a million erasures, which is about 10 times higher than other new storage technologies such as flash memory and RRAM. With the requirements of the software defined vehicle era, this feature will make MRAM an ideal choice.