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.

Semiconductors. Is the Bubble About To Burst?

Intel's Potential $720 Million Holiday Season Gift To AMD

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)

Colombia Semiconductors and semiconductor equipment / Thematic (Sector/Industry)

US-imposed trade tariffs on $200 billion worth of exports from China took effect last week despite the unanimous advice of the US technology sector that it would be contrary to their best interests and have no impact on the alleged intellectual property violations it was intended to redress. In last week's earnings call, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/13382" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:13382:1">Micron</a> was the one of the first companies to put a tangible figure on the impact of the tariffs, blaming them for a 50-100 basis points reduction in gross margins in the coming quarters. While Micron implied that they would be working to mitigate that impact, it would appear that <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/16764" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:16764:1">Intel</a> has already been quietly laying the ground work for their own mitigation.Product Change Notifications (PCN) posted on the company website in recent weeks point to a change in the final step in the manufacturing process for key products. The change involves switching that final step from being completed in China to being completed in Vietnam, thereby neatly sidestepping tariffs that would otherwise be imposed. This change has already been flagged by Intel for its entire client and networking product lineup and we expect similar moves for any data center products currently undergoing final assembly/test in China to follow suit. By means of this simple realignment of the final step in its manufacturing process, we believe that Intel has initiated a preemptive strike which should largely mitigate, if not entirely eliminate, the impact of any trade tariff imposition. Where Intel leads, other will surely follow.

US-imposed trade tariffs on $200 billion worth of exports from China took effect last week despite the unanimous advice of the US technology sector that it would be contrary to their best interests and have no impact on the alleged intellectual property violations it was intended to redress. In last week's earnings call, Micron was the one of the first companies to put a tangible figure on the impact of the tariffs, blaming them for a 50-100 basis points reduction in gross margins in the coming quarters. While Micron implied that they would be working to mitigate that impact, it would appear that Intel has already been quietly laying the ground work for their own mitigation.Product Change Notifications (PCN) posted on the company website in recent weeks point to a change in the final step in the manufacturing process for key products. The change involves switching that final step from being completed in China to being completed in Vietnam, thereby neatly sidestepping tariffs that would otherwise be imposed. This change has already been flagged by Intel for its entire client and networking product lineup and we expect similar moves for any data center products currently undergoing final assembly/test in China to follow suit. By means of this simple realignment of the final step in its manufacturing process, we believe that Intel has initiated a preemptive strike which should largely mitigate, if not entirely eliminate, the impact of any trade tariff imposition. Where Intel leads, other will surely follow. 

Intel's Preemptive Strike Against Trade Tariffs

Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment

Intel's Preemptive Strike Against Trade Tariffs