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39 semiconductor listed companies on the A-share market have disclosed their 2023 interim performance forecasts. Among them, 30 companies are expected to make profits, 9 are expected to incur losses, and the proportion of companies with expected profits exceeds 70%. Specifically, 8 companies are expected to see an increase in performance, 21 are expected to see a decrease, 8 will experience their first loss, 1 will turn a loss, and 1 will see an increase in losses. The main business of companies with expected year-on-year increase in net profit is mostly semiconductor equipment. Several equipment companies expect a significant increase in net profit, for example, Zhongwei Company expects a year-on-year increase of 109.49% -120.18% in net profit attributable to shareholders in the first half of the year. The company stated that the market share of its key customers for etching equipment continued to increase during the reporting period. In addition, Wanye Enterprise expects its net profit attributable to the parent company to increase by about 316% year-on-year in the first half of the year, and its equipment manufacturing business revenue to increase by about 18% year-on-year. Li Keyi, Chief Expert of Yuanhe Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd., told Securities Daily reporters that there is still a demand gap in key areas such as semiconductor equipment and materials, and related listed companies are expected to continue to benefit. Most listed companies with relatively mature core technologies and innovation capabilities have dominant advantages in the industry chain and strong risk resistance capabilities. In the long run, semiconductor companies still need to master core technologies to enhance their voice. The listed companies with expected net profit reduction are mainly focused on SoC chip research and development, IC design (integrated circuit design), packaging and testing, and most of their cutting-edge technology project development and research are in the early stage of investment. Leaders in segmented industries such as Zhaoyi Innovation and Shanghai Beiling are expected to see a net profit decline of over 50% in the first half of the year. The lower than expected demand in the consumer electronics market and the pressure on product sales prices have become important factors affecting company performance. Semiconductor packaging and testing leader Huatian Technology expects a net profit decline of 86.38% -90.27% in the first half of the year. The company stated that the demand for end market products has decreased during the reporting period, and the company's orders are not full. Song Jia, director of the Integration and Collaborative Innovation Center of the Machinery Industry Economic Management Research Institute, said in an interview with Securities Daily, "Due to the fact that the consumer electronics industry still needs to recover, the performance of semiconductor companies may continue to be under pressure in the second half of this year. However, with the sudden breakthrough of processes and the continued enthusiasm for capital, we still have a positive outlook on the industrial chain development and investment opportunities brought by the localization process of semiconductor equipment in the long run "In the past year, the global semiconductor market experienced a cyclical decline. At present, the terminal market has not fully recovered, and the inflection point of the semiconductor industry may be delayed to next year. However, with the gradual release of the inventory pressure of semiconductor enterprises and the recovery of demand, market confidence will continue to improve." Guo Tao, an angel investor and well-known Internet expert, believes. At the same time, the localization process of various links in China's semiconductor industry chain is also accelerating, and equipment enterprises are maintaining countercyclical high-speed growth. Currently, there are huge opportunities for localization in multiple sub sectors of the semiconductor industry. At the same time, applications such as large models and autonomous driving are accelerating their large-scale implementation, which will also drive the semiconductor industry to enter a high-speed growth stage in the coming years. Driven by artificial intelligence technology, digital chips, semiconductor equipment, and packaging and testing have become important directions for institutions to increase their holdings, and market investment activity has increased, "said Chen Jia, a researcher at the Institute of International Monetary Studies at Renmin University of China. In this context, listed companies in the semiconductor industry chain that seize development opportunities are expected to continue to benefit. An Guangyong, an expert from the Credit Management Committee of the All Union Mergers and Acquisitions Association, suggested that relevant listed companies should achieve diversification of their supply chains, increase investment in research and development of new technologies, and establish effective management mechanisms for cost control. Relevant departments should also continue to provide policy support and financial guidance to provide a favorable development environment for listed companies. Source: Securities Daily

According to the latest forecast from Semiconductor Intelligence, semiconductor capital expenditures (CapEx) will decrease by 14% in 2023, with the storage industry experiencing the largest reduction of 19%. In recent years, the PC and smartphone markets have remained sluggish without any signs of improvement, and the storage industry has been severely affected. In addition to significant spending cuts by storage companies, contract manufacturers will also reduce capital expenditures by 11% in 2023, TSMC by 12%, UMC by 2%, and Gexin by 27%. IDM manufacturers have reduced their capital expenditures by 7%, with Intel planning to cut by 19%. Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, and Infineon have risen to the challenge and increased their capital expenditures in 2023, with the automotive and industrial related markets making the main contribution. The decline in the personal computer market has affected Intel and memory companies, while the weakness in the smartphone market has affected TSMC and memory companies. Apple and Qualcomm are TSMC's two largest customers.

On July 19th, the China Semiconductor Industry Association issued a statement on maintaining the global development of the semiconductor industry. The full text is as follows:

Global chip experts believe that talent shortage is the main obstacle to growth. With the weakening of global economic growth, politicians and universities in various countries are eager to make the most of it, which has a significant impact on the funding sources of research institutions.

A key strategy of the fully autonomous vehicle is to be able to fuse inputs from multiple sensors, which is crucial for making safe and reliable decisions. However, it has proved to be much more difficult than initially thought. There are many issues that need to be addressed, including how to divide, prioritize, and ultimately combine different types of data, as well as how to construct internal processing for the vehicle so that it can quickly make decisions based on these different data types to avoid accidents. There is no single best practice for achieving this goal, which is why many automotive original equipment manufacturers have taken vastly different approaches.

Celestial AI, based in Santa Clara, California, USA, is the creator of photonic structures. The company received $100 million in Series B funding, led by IAG Capital Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), and Temasek's Xora Innovation Fund. Other major investors in this round of financing include Samsung Catalyst, Smart Global Holdings (SGH), Porsche Automobile Holding SE, the Engine Fund, and imec. Expansion, M Ventures, and Tyche Partners. The optical connectivity performance level provided by Celestial AI's photonic structure technology platform is reportedly ten years ahead of existing technology products. Celestial AI states that the era of electronic connections limiting data transmission is coming to an end, as optical interconnects become the fundamental building blocks for accelerating computing. Today's advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models require exponential growth in memory capacity and bandwidth, as large language models (LLMs), including GPT-4 used for ChatGPT and recommendation engines, are memory constraints rather than computational constraints. Cloud service providers (CSPs) and hyperscale data centers are unable to separate memory expansion from computing (often referred to as the "memory wall" challenge). Low bandwidth, high latency, and high-power electrical interconnection are important obstacles to the growth of profitable business models and progress in artificial intelligence. Therefore, Optical Computing Interconnection (OCI) is considered the only feasible solution for implementing scalable data center memory decomposition and accelerating computation. In addition, the pool storage system of optical interconnection solves the biggest factor causing low economic efficiency in data centers - stranded memory. After closely collaborating with hyperscale, artificial intelligence computing, and memory providers, Celestial AI has launched Photonic Fabric, an optical interconnect for decomposition, billions of computations, and memory clusters. It is said that the photonic structure is not constrained by the packaging seaside restrictions and can transmit data to any location on the computing chip, directly to the consumption point. The bandwidth provided by photonic structures is 25 times higher than any alternative optical interconnect solution, such as co packaged optical devices (CPO), with latency and power consumption reduced by more than 10 times. Dave Lazovsky, founder and CEO of Celestial AI, stated, "Generative artificial intelligence and recommendation engines running on general-purpose computing systems are starting to have a significant impact on business processes, products, and services." "With the global data center infrastructure shifting from general-purpose to accelerated computing systems, there will be a rapid transformation in the coming years. The architecture of the next wave of data center infrastructure aims to achieve the decomposition of memory and computing resources through optical interconnects, making significant progress in AI workload efficiency Celestial AI is building a powerful photonic structure ecosystem consisting of AI computing, memory suppliers, hyperscale suppliers, and a large number of commercial supply chain partners. This technology is compatible with existing industry standards, including CXL, PCIe, UCIe, JEDEC HBM, and proprietary electrical communication links. Celestial AI offers its photonic structure optical interconnect technology and silicon validated IP through a technology licensing program. Celestial AI has developed a transformative optical connectivity capability that will achieve a leap forward in performance and energy efficiency in high-performance computing, unleashing the potential of native AI and other complex workloads, "commented Chase Koch, founder and CEO of Koch Disruptive Technologies. He believes that "this may be a truly disruptive moment for advanced computing Celestial AI provides a set of photonic structure technology solutions to provide independent computing and memory resource scalability. Customers can extend their existing computing platforms (GPUs, CPUs, and accelerators) with photonic structures through authorized IPs, or utilize the full end-to-end advantages of photonic structures through Celestial AI's Orion AI Accelerator. The photonic structure also supports the production deployment of the industry's first optical interconnect high-capacity, high bandwidth combinable storage system. News: Optoelectronics

          Due to the need to improve performance and cost constraints, new materials, platforms, and designs are constantly being researched in the semiconductor industry. In the past decade, some compound semiconductors, such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) for radio frequency (RF) and silicon carbide (SiC) for power electronics, have successfully competed with silicon and entered the mass market. So, which emerging semiconductor substrate will be the next game changer? In its latest report; Emerging semiconductor substrates 2023&

Atsuyoshi Koike, CEO of Rapidus, stated in an exclusive interview with EE Times in Brussels that Rapidus will receive push from Japan's CHIPS Act and IBM to launch the only semiconductor foundry in Japan that manufactures the world's most advanced silicon, only two years behind industry giant TSMC. Xiaochi and his team of over 100 people are taking on a once-in-a-lifetime challenge. Xiaochi is a veteran in the chip industry and has recently worked at Western Digital

How far can RISC-V design go with compatibility? The answer is not always clear-cut, as the concept of RISC-V is very different from previous open source projects. However, as interest and activity towards RISC-V continue to grow, constructive discussions are underway to address some of the challenges in designing open standard ISA. Mark Himelstein, Chief Technology Officer of RISC-V International, said:; The RISC-V standard is compatible. “ However, we usually do not use‘ both