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

Learnings From The History Of Memory Part 2- DRAM Supply, Demand & Pricing Are Foregone Conclusions

Learnings From The History Of Memory Part 3- The Amazing Resurgence of NOR Flash

Learnings From The History of Memory Part 4- The Insatiable Demand For NAND Flash

A Brief Analysis of Semiconductor Wafer Fab Equipment's Current Growth Cycle

Micron/Inotera: Finally an End to the DRAMa?

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)

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

Memory, both DRAM and NAND, are currently in a super-cycle characterized by tight supply and rising prices. Commentators are divided as to whether this cycle is different from previous cycles and consequently what the future holds for supply, demand and pricing. Furthermore, there are growing concerns that China’s semiconductor ambitions could soon result in the market being flooded with high volumes of low-cost DRAM. In this Insight, we examine the history of DRAM from inception to the present day, in particular looking at how market leadership which began in the US, transitioned first to Japan and then to Korea, with a largely failed attempt by Taiwan in between. We ask whether the conditions that allowed these leadership transitions to occur in the past could once again play out in favour of China’s determination to grow its indigenous semiconductor industry.

Memory, both DRAM and NAND, are currently in a super-cycle characterized by tight supply and rising prices. Commentators are divided as to whether this cycle is different from previous cycles and consequently what the future holds for supply, demand and pricing. Furthermore, there are growing concerns that China’s semiconductor ambitions could soon result in the market being flooded with high volumes of low-cost DRAM. In this Insight, we examine the history of DRAM from inception to the present day, in particular looking at how market leadership which began in the US, transitioned first to Japan and then to Korea, with a largely failed attempt by Taiwan in between. We ask whether the conditions that allowed these leadership transitions to occur in the past could once again play out in favour of China’s determination to grow its indigenous semiconductor industry.  

Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) - ADR (TSM US)

Learnings From The History Of Memory Part 1 - China's DRAM Dreams