"The price of lidar continues to decline, which should not be far from full popularization
According to media reports, velodyne recently launched a new lidar sensor velarray H800, with a bulk purchase price as low as $500. Although the price has decreased, the gas horizontal field of view (FOV) and range are larger than the existing models. In terms of specific specifications, the sensor has a 120 ° horizontal field of view and a 16 ° vertical field of view, with a maximum range of 200 meters (more than 650 feet) and a nearest distance of 10 cm (< 4 inches).
Kevin's comments: lidar has finally ushered in the era of comprehensive price reduction. Previously, velodyne's puck vlp-16 was very popular in the field of automatic driving. It is characterized by a range of 100 meters and a 360 ° angle of view. Even if the price was reduced once in 2018, the purchase cost of car companies is still as high as $4000.
Due to the high price of lidar, many car companies are deterred from lidar. For example, Tesla insists on not using lidar. Now, with the continuous decline of lidar price, more vehicle enterprises will use lidar scheme in advanced driving assistance systems such as adaptive cruise control and lane keeping in the future. Autopilot will still be dominated by lidar. From this point of view, it should not be far from the era of fully popularizing lidar for cars.
Qualcomm obtains supply license to China
On November 14, Qualcomm said that we had obtained licenses for some products, including some 4G products. However, Qualcomm did not disclose when it could resume the supply of 5g products to Huawei.
Kitty's comments: This is a very positive development of Qualcomm's supply license to Huawei. What is most worth looking forward to is whether it can supply 5g to Huawei in the future.
On November 4, Qualcomm said in its fourth quarter financial report that it had received $1.8 billion in patent fees paid by Huawei. Cristiano Amon, President of Qualcomm, said at the earnings conference that Huawei has created an opportunity to expand the potential market for Qualcomm's mobile chip business. If you can get the permission to sell to Huawei, it will be a completely positive opportunity.
Ten days later, this completely positive opportunity came, but the first step was to license 4G products. However, what will Huawei use to purchase Qualcomm's 4G chips? At least in the field of smart phones, Huawei's 5g chip has taken the lead, and it is not realistic to go back and launch 4G phones. Moreover, MediaTek's Tianji 720 and 700 5g chips are oriented to the mass market and have pulled the price below 1000 yuan. 5g replacing 4G is an inevitable trend. Of course, perhaps in the field of Internet of things, 4G chips can be used.
At present, Intel, AMD, TSMC, Sony, Howell and other companies have obtained the license to supply Huawei. Of course, TSMC supplies mature processes above 28nm rather than advanced processes. Since we are moving forward, is it possible that 5g chips will be licensed in the near future? According to previous reports, while the supply of Huawei has been opened one after another, only 5g can not. Therefore, whether Qualcomm can supply 5g chips to Huawei cannot be too optimistic.
SMIC released 20q3 financial report, with revenue exceeding US $1 billion for the first time in a single quarter
On November 11, SMIC released its financial report for the third quarter of 2020. The financial report showed that the company's Q3 revenue was US $1.08 billion, an increase of 15.3% month on month and 32.6% year-on-year. The market estimated that it was US $994.8 million; The net profit in the third quarter was $256.4 million, a record high.
SMIC's annual revenue growth is expected to be revised up to 24% to 26%, and the annual gross profit margin target is higher than that of last year. SMIC's gross profit in the third quarter of 2020 was US $262 million, an increase of 5.4% over the second quarter of 2020. It is expected that the revenue in the fourth quarter will decrease by 10% - 12% month on month, and the annual revenue growth is expected to be revised up to 24% - 26%.
Dr. Gao Yonggang, chief financial officer of SMIC, commented: "in the third quarter, the company's revenue continued to reach a new high, reaching US $1083 million, a month on month increase of 15.3% and a year-on-year increase of 32.6%; The gross profit was US $262 million, the profit attributable to the company was US $256 million, and the profit before tax, interest, depreciation and amortization was US $653 million, a record high. The annual revenue growth is expected to be revised up to 24% to 26%, and the annual gross profit margin target is higher than last year. "
Dr. Zhao Haijun and Dr. Liang Mengsong, CO chief executives of SMIC international, commented: "the demand for mature application platforms is as strong as ever, with significant growth in revenue related to power management, RF signal processing, fingerprint identification and image signal processing. The application of advanced technology is diverse. The yield of the first generation of advanced technology has reached the level of mass production in the industry, and the second generation has entered a small trial production. The company has steadily expanded its production capacity and maintained a high capacity utilization rate.
Lily's comments: SMIC's third quarter performance is bright, but we see that SMIC expects its fourth quarter revenue to decrease month on month. According to the analysis of Guojin securities, the revenue and gross profit margin guidelines of SMIC in the fourth quarter were lower than those of TSMC, liandian and Huahong, which was attributed to SMIC's loss of hisilic's high unit price and the continuous increase of depreciation expenses.
Gao Yonggang, CFO of SMIC international, also said that there are three reasons for the company's expected decline of 10% in the fourth quarter: the reduction of shipments, the decline of average sales price caused by the change of product portfolio, and other business contributions in the third quarter. This year, SMIC's capital expenditure plan will be revised back from US $6.7 billion to US $5.9 billion, mainly for the following two reasons: first, the extension or uncertainty of the supply period of some equipment caused by US export control; Second, the arrival of some equipment is delayed due to logistics reasons.
It can be seen that the sequelae of American regulation began to appear. Zhao Haijun, CO CEO, said that the biggest problem of export control was the impact on the production expansion plan, and the delivery of some American equipment, parts and raw materials was delayed. Dr. Liang Mengsong pointed out that at present, the production capacity of advanced processes is small, and the equipment that may be affected by the control prohibition order is being sorted out with suppliers.
Q3 financial report shows that the contribution of 14nm / 28nm revenue increased from 4.3% of Q3 in 2019 to 14.6% of Q3 in 2020. The company also revealed that SMIC has cooperated with more than 10 domestic and overseas customers in the 14nm and N + 1 generation of FinFET process technology. SMIC is also actively exploring the diversification of customers in advanced processes. It is expected that the revenue in this process will increase in a certain proportion in the future.
TSMC's 5nm capacity burst and Samsung took over Apple's order on the way
On November 11, Apple launched two notebooks equipped with M1 chip produced by 5nm process. According to the traditional manufacturing situation, Apple's chips are basically OEM by TSMC, but according to South Korean media, many people in the industry believe that due to TSMC's tight production capacity, some orders will be produced by Samsung Electronics.
According to insiders, at present, Apple's M1 chip orders account for about 25% of TSMC's 5nm capacity. However, most of TSMC's 5nm capacity is providing chips for iPhone 12, which can not meet Apple's demand for M1 chips. It is expected that Apple will hand over most M1 chip orders to Samsung.
Simon's comments: since 2015, Apple has stopped ordering chips from Samsung and turned to rely entirely on TSMC. Of course, technically, TSMC's packaging technology is obviously better than Samsung. At the same time, TSMC's chip manufacturing process is also more advanced than Samsung. Choosing a better chip foundry is also in line with Apple's own positioning.
However, from a commercial point of view, it has always been said that it is obviously unfavorable for apple to hand over the chip to TSMC for independent production. Apple has always wanted to implement a multi supplier strategy, such as RF front-end, battery, vibration motor, etc. Even if the screen has been supplied by Samsung in the past few years, it has also been improved on the iPhone 12. The screen of the iPhone 12 is jointly supplied by Samsung and LG. By the end of the year, BOE is also expected to become a supplier of Apple's mobile phone screen.
For apple, the multi supplier strategy can provide great room for Business Turnaround and effectively reduce the supply chain risk. This time, apple interface TSMC's 5nm capacity is full, and most M1 chips are produced by Samsung. On the one hand, it can get enough supply in time, on the other hand, it also reduces its own supply chain risk. In addition, apple can also effectively separate mobile phone chips from PC chips and manufacture them under different processes, which can avoid direct comparison and have more room for commercial pricing.
Moreover, once Samsung Electronics can complete the order of Apple M1, it will be possible to restart the long-term cooperation between apple and Samsung Electronics on chip OEM, which will have a more far-reaching impact on Apple's future layout.
Xilinx and Samsung launched smartssd to improve the server data processing performance by at least 10 times
In order to strengthen the server efficiency and further improve the data center processing and instruction cycle, Xilinx recently announced to work with Samsung to build a smartssd computing storage drive (CSD).
Smartssd CSD integrates Xilinx FPGA accelerator to reduce the limitation of server CPU, reduce data movement, reduce delay and power consumption, and accelerate the speed and efficiency of data processing.
Carol comments: smartssd CSD is a highly flexible programmable storage platform. Developers can build various unique and scalable accelerators to solve various data center problems. It can also help the new generation of software developers build innovative hardware component acceleration solutions with familiar high-level programming languages.
For applications such as database management, video processing, artificial intelligence layer, complex search and virtualization, smartssd CSD can improve its data processing efficiency by at least 10 times.
Pej Roshan, vice president of marketing of Xilinx Data Center Division, said that data processing is the key to value. Smartssd CSD enables a wide range of novice developers to use the advantages of computing storage to quickly realize amazing applications to solve a series of thorny data center problems.
Smartssd CSD enables enterprises to meet the needs of users to obtain data faster without being forced to buy more servers, resulting in capital expenditure and operating expenses. In addition, the resources of host CPU are released to deal with other higher-level tasks more effectively.
Uber is considering selling autopilot business to Aurora.
18 months ago, Uber's advanced technology division was valued at $7.25 billion, and then received $1 billion from Toyota and Softbank. Now Uber has considered selling the Department, and Aurora, another start-up competitor, is discussing the acquisition with it. It is reported that the negotiations have been going on since October, but both companies have refused to respond to the matter.
Leland comment: for Uber, the sale of autopilot business can be said to have thrown off a hot potato. The business spent a lot of money on its short life span and spent 2 billion 500 million dollars in 5 years, and it also caused many internal disputes. Affected by the epidemic, in the past 11 months, Uber has sold the bike sharing business jump, which was acquired shortly, at a loss, and acquired the distribution company postmate. From these trends, Uber plans to focus its business on online car hailing and distribution.
For Aurora, founded by veterans of the automatic driving departments of Google, Tesla and Uber, if the acquisition goes well, its staff size will be tripled, and there will be many more cards in the face of strong competitors such as Google waymo and GM cruise. In fact, Uber's automatic driving Department has already had frequent hidden dangers. Although it has conducted road tests for many times, it is facing the dilemma of business model selection like other automatic driving enterprises, not to mention that the Department is rewriting the new automatic driving software system recently in order to solve the unreliable problems in the past. Although the deal has not yet been fixed, Aurora is in good condition, not only acquiring the Blackmore of the lidar company, but also getting strategic investment from Amazon. After the successful takeover, the auto driving industry may reshuffle.
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