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

Micron. Modeling DRAM Through The Lens Of A Looming Price Correction

Semiconductor Storage NAND Flash Supply, Demand & Pricing Review Q2 2018

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

Semiconductor Wafer Fab Equipment Sector Review, Outlook Q2 2018

TSMC May Have Another New Customer. Intel.

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)

Global semiconductor sales grew to an all-time record high of $412 billion in 2017 for a YoY increase of 21.6%. Of note is the fact that some 50% of that growth was attributable to steep price hikes in both DRAM and NAND, an important reminder of the oversized impact these so-called commodities have on the broader sector. Now, 2018 is shaping up to be another record year with the latest forecasts predicting a further 15.7% YoY growth for a total of $477 billion. That positive outlook notwithstanding, there are some early warning signs, primarily from bellwether equipment makers, that second half growth is slowing. While they are calling for the bottom in the current quarter, there are growing concerns about what may transpire in the fourth quarter and beyond. To make matters worse, leading analysts recently warned about a cyclical downturn, citing everything from collapsing memory prices, channel checks, slowing server sales, inventory build-ups in the wake of the annual SEMICON Taiwan conference earlier this month. As the undisputed epicenter for desktop and notebook ODMs, Taiwan's supply chain has long served as a proxy for the broader semiconductor industry. Times are changing however and we posit that the sector is now dominated by the foibles, fortunes and forecasts of the hyperscalers, the leading memory and storage manufacturers, the leading smartphone makers, the leading foundry TSMC and of course the leading IDM, Intel. Contrary to the recent alarmist projections, we find little evidence in our sector health-check of anything other than a timely reset, in fact a healthy reality check involving memory and storage ceding some long-overdue ground and lagging foundries facing up to the reality that they do not have the wherewithal to deliver leading-node process technologies. What we see in slowing wafer fab equipment sales are rational decisions which serve to preserve the longer-term health of the sector rather than being indicative of an imminent collapse. For their part, memory and storage prices will correct, but they always have and they always will. The difference today is that they have the potential to correct without inducing a sector-wide collapse. Sure, semiconductor sales will likely taper off in the latter half of 2018 and into 2019, but after two consecutive years of record growth, we expect that. Sure, the hype surrounding growth driven by crypto mining, IoT, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving is wearing thin, but so it should. The bottom line is that the current semiconductor growth cycle is not a bubble and it's not about to burst. Deflate, ease back, cool off sure, but not burst.

Global semiconductor sales grew to an all-time record high of $412 billion in 2017 for a YoY increase of 21.6%. Of note is the fact that some 50% of that growth was attributable to steep price hikes in both DRAM and NAND, an important reminder of the oversized impact these so-called commodities have on the broader sector. Now, 2018 is shaping up to be another record year with the latest forecasts predicting a further 15.7% YoY growth for a total of $477 billion. That positive outlook notwithstanding, there are some early warning signs, primarily from bellwether equipment makers, that second half growth is slowing. While they are calling for the bottom in the current quarter, there are growing concerns about what may transpire in the fourth quarter and beyond. To make matters worse, leading analysts recently warned about a cyclical downturn, citing everything from collapsing memory prices, channel checks, slowing server sales, inventory build-ups in the wake of the annual SEMICON Taiwan conference earlier this month. As the undisputed epicenter for desktop and notebook ODMs, Taiwan's supply chain has long served as a proxy for the broader semiconductor industry. Times are changing however and we posit that the sector is now dominated by the foibles, fortunes and forecasts of the hyperscalers, the leading memory and storage manufacturers, the leading smartphone makers, the leading foundry TSMC and of course the leading IDM, Intel. Contrary to the recent alarmist projections, we find little evidence in our sector health-check of anything other than a timely reset, in fact a healthy reality check involving memory and storage ceding some long-overdue ground and lagging foundries facing up to the reality that they do not have the wherewithal to deliver leading-node process technologies. What we see in slowing wafer fab equipment sales are rational decisions which serve to preserve the longer-term health of the sector rather than being indicative of an imminent collapse. For their part, memory and storage prices will correct, but they always have and they always will. The difference today is that they have the potential to correct without inducing a sector-wide collapse. Sure, semiconductor sales will likely taper off in the latter half of 2018 and into 2019, but after two consecutive years of record growth, we expect that. Sure, the hype surrounding growth driven by crypto mining, IoT, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving is wearing thin, but so it should. The bottom line is that the current semiconductor growth cycle is not a bubble and it's not about to burst. Deflate, ease back, cool off sure, but not burst. 

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing) - ADR (TSM US)

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing) - ADR

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