Semiconductor & Technology Specialist, Ingenuity

William Keating

Dr. William Keating is a highly experienced senior executive with over 25 years experience in the IT/Semiconductor Industry. The majority of Dr. Keating's career was spent at Intel Corporation where he held senior leadership positions in Europe, the US and Asia from 1992 through 2014. He served as Intel's IT Director for APAC, China & Japan from 2005 through 2014 when he was based in Hong Kong and was responsible for the IT systems (Infrastructure, Networks, Data Centres, ERP, Sales & Marketing systems, Business Intelligence etc. ) for all of Intel's offices & factories through the region. From 1998 through 2005, he was the founder & director of an internal IT Consulting Organisation (IT Flex Services), a 500-person team which remains a core part of the Intel IT Organisation to this day. Dr. Keating's first 6 years at Intel were spent in charge of the Factory Automation Systems (Robotics, Databases, Networks, Servers, Clients etc.) supporting Intel's then state-of-the-art 200mm factory network. Since leaving Intel in 2014, Dr Keating established his own Technology Research & Consulting Company (www.ingenuity.hk) where he focuses on the products, roadmaps & technologies of companies such as Intel, AMD, Samsung, Apple, Micron- as well as the key equipment suppliers to those companies e.g. ASML, AMAT, Canon, Nikon etc. Dr. Keating specializes in niche topics of high significance within the semiconductor industry. These include the future of Moore's Law and in particular the significance of Lithography in maintaining Moore's Law (EUV, SDA, NanoImprint), the role & growth of the GPU in specialised applications such as Deep Learning (Neural Networks) for Voice, Image & Pattern recognition at companies such as Facebook, Google & Baidu. He also holds regular discussions on the future of memory, in particular the rise of 3D NAND and the emergence of new memory technologies such as 3D Xpoint.

Semiconductor & Technology Specialist

Micron. What The Market Is Missing, For Now.

Intel's Preemptive Strike Against Trade Tariffs

Intel To Micron- So Long & Thanks For All The Memories!

A Brief Analysis Of The Latest Emerging & Speciality Memory Technologies

Micron Investor Day 2018- What You Really Need To Know

Ingenuity

Our focus is exclusively on in-depth research & consulting in the broader semiconductor industry. We focus on the key players, namely Intel, Micron, Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, NVIDIA, AMD, TSMC & Global Foundries - as well as some of the lesser known, but nonetheless critical, companies such as ASML (for EUV), Mellanox, Cavium, Xilinx etc. We specialise in their products, roadmaps, process technologies, competitive advantages & threats etc. We also help our clients understand the implications of new and emerging technologies, e.g. 3D X-Point, 3D NAND, Carbon Nanotubes, Autonomous Driving, Graphene, Silicon Photonics, Wafer-Level Optics, Artificial Intelligence, FPGA, GPU, ASIC etc. 

Semiconductor Analysis & Research

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

In separate but identical press releases (<a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/micron-intel-announce-update-3d-xpoint-joint-development-program/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-45YXOQ/6275168232x0x982573/92029BB5-BC0F-449F-9FF9-E3D319C6B4D9/MU_News_2018_7_16_Corporate_News.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>) on July 16'th 2018, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/16764" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:16764:1">Intel</a> and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/13382" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:13382:1">Micron</a> announced that they were going it alone on the future development of their much-publicised 3D Xpoint, an entirely new class of non-volatile memory with "dramatically lower latency and exponentially greater endurance than NAND memory".Coming on the heels of a January 2018 announcement to terminate their 3D NAND partnership once the next generation research is complete, this latest news signals the end of the line for a partnership that began back in 2005 and has generally served both companies well over the years.Recent revelations in the latest Micron's earnings call point the real finger of blame at the fact that Intel is no longer purchasing Micron's share of the 3D XPoint output from their IMFT fab in Lehi, Utah. This has two important implications. Firstly, 3D Xpoint sales by Intel are falling far short of expectations. Secondly, Micron is unwilling to continue shouldering the responsibility for the resulting underutilization charges at the Lehi fab. However, this latest break-up does nothing to address the latter problem and we anticipate that a further announcement will soon be forthcoming from the erstwhile partners.

In separate but identical press releases (here and here) on July 16'th 2018, Intel and Micron announced that they were going it alone on the future development of their much-publicised 3D Xpoint, an entirely new class of non-volatile memory with "dramatically lower latency and exponentially greater endurance than NAND memory".Coming on the heels of a January 2018 announcement to terminate their 3D NAND partnership once the next generation research is complete, this latest news signals the end of the line for a partnership that began back in 2005 and has generally served both companies well over the years.Recent revelations in the latest Micron's earnings call point the real finger of blame at the fact that Intel is no longer purchasing Micron's share of the 3D XPoint output from their IMFT fab in Lehi, Utah. This has two important implications. Firstly, 3D Xpoint sales by Intel are falling far short of expectations. Secondly, Micron is unwilling to continue shouldering the responsibility for the resulting underutilization charges at the Lehi fab. However, this latest break-up does nothing to address the latter problem and we anticipate that a further announcement will soon be forthcoming from the erstwhile partners. 

Intel And Micron Finally Call It A Day