SmartSens Corporate Video
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digitimes.com
China-based Kuntech stepping into flexible AMOLED market
Martin Yao, Taipei; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES
2-3 minutes
China-based Kuntech stepping into flexible AMOLED market
Monday 22 October 2018
China-based Kuntech Semiconductor Technology has joined the race for ramping up production of flexible AMOLED panels to meet potential demand from the smartphone and other IT sectors, according to industry sources.
Kuntech announced recently that it will invest CNY40 billion (US$5.77 billion) to establish a flexible semiconductor service and manufacturing base in Shaanxi, with plans to kick off the operations of the production base in the fourth quarter of 2020 and to officially mass-produce flexible AMOLED panels in the third quarter of 2021.
Under the project, Kuntech will set up a 6G flexible AMOLED panel line with a capacity of 30,000 1,500mm by 1,800 mm substrates a month. The production and service base will also accommodate a technology research and certification center and a well-established supply chain, company president Austin Jwo said at a press conference.
Being a flat panel maker dedicated to the development of self-sufficient flexible display technology, Jwo continued that Kuntech aims to offer total solutions consisting of manufacturing and related services.
Demand for flexible AMOLED panels will come from the smartphone sector initially as handset vendors including Samsung Electronics, Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo are expected to roll out foldable smartphone models in early 2019, said the sources.
Recent market rumors also indicated that Samsung is expected to unveil its first flexible smartphone, reportedly named Galaxy F, in the upcoming CES 2019.
The application of flexible AMOLED panels will then extend to most of IT products such as notebooks and tablets, resulting in an explosive growth in demand for the flexible panels, added the sources.
Shipments of flexible AMOLED panels are expected to reach 335.7 million units by 2020, topping those of rigid AMOLED panels at 315.9 million units, and flexible AMOLED panels are predicted to make up 52% of total AMOLED panel shipments in 2020, up from 38.9% in 2018, according to IHS Markit.
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digitimes.com
Consortium formed in China to rev up development of RISC-V processors
Shinee Wu, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES
3 minutes
More than 50 IC designers, academic units and research bodies in China have recently established the China RISC-V Industry Consortium, seeking to develop the country's independent intellectual property rights for core IC technologies and ushering in a new development stage for China's RISC-V industry.
RISC-V is an open instruction set architecture (ISA) based on the established reduced instruction set computing (RISC) principles, and can be freely used for any purpose, allowing anyone to design, manufacture, and sell RISC-V chips and software.
Members of the new consortium include China IC designers, such as VeriSilicon, Espressif Systems, Ingenic Semiconductor, UNISOC (Spreadtrum & RDA), Zhaoxin Semiconductor, Horizon Robotics, and C*Core Technology, yet excluding Hisilicon and C-Sky Microsystems.
Consortium chairman Dai Weimin, currently chairman of VeriSilicon, said at the inauguration ceremony for the new organization that the largest opportunity RISC-V will bring to China is to place the country and the rest of the world on the same starting line.
Based on a recent market research report issued by GSMA, the global IoT market scale including connections, applications, platforms and services will amount to US$1.1 trillion by 2025, with commercial applications to command some 50% of the market. GSMA also estimates that there will be 1.8 billion IoT connections done by 2025, and China will become a huge market for IoT technologies and applications, which will naturally drive the birth of RISC-V ISAs.
China IC players are strong in application-type SoCs but weak in IP and fabrication ends, vice consortium chairman Hu Zhenpo said, adding that RISC-V can help address the processor IP weakness and build independent ecosystems to materialize more technology innovations and differentiations for the China semiconductor industry.
China IC designers are actively developing processor chips based on RISC-V architectures. Andes Technology, for instance, has launched four CPU cores - N25F, A25, NX25F and AX25 - featuring the architectures. At the moment, the company is teaming up with SiFive to develop more RISC-V ISAs, pioneering the development of such RISC-V chips in China.
On September 17, Huami also released Huangshan MHS001 chip, touted as the world's first RISC-V processor for wearable devices with a computing performance 38% higher than ARM Cortex-M4.
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dealstreetasia.com
Shanghai rollable display maker Royole hits $5b valuation after new round
Mars Woo
3 minutes
Shanghai-based rollable display firm Royole Corporation has reached a valuation of $5 billion after raising an undisclosed amount from Yingke Innovation Asset Management for its ongoing Series E round.
According to a China Money Network report, Royole Corporation did not disclose the amount of the new capital injection but said it is in the process of securing more investments for the ongoing round.
Founded in 2012 by a team of scientists headed by Tsinghua and Stanford graduate Bill Liu, the company creates and manufactures next-generation human-machine interface technologies and products, such as flexible displays, flexible sensors, and smart devices.
On its website, Royole sells t-shirts and caps embedded with flexible wearables, where instead of the traditional prints, the wearer can display the moving graphics he or she wants using a smart phone.
Last year, Royole raised a total of $800 million in Series D to support its R&D efforts and accelerate production and sales.
The round included $240 million equity financing from Chinese investment firms including Hanfor Capital Management Co., Ltd, Warmsun Holding Group, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co., Ltd., Zhonghai Shengrong and Tanshi Capital.
It also involved $560 million debt financing from China CITIC Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, Bank of China and Ping An Bank Co., Ltd.
In 2015, Royole raised $172 million in a Series C round co-led by IDG Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, and Green Pine Capital.
According to Crunchbase data, Royole’s total funding amount has reached $1.1 billion from six funding rounds. The Shenzhen-based company’s valuation has gradually climbed from $3 billion in 2016 to $5 billion currently.
“Within six years of starting business, Royole has grown to a team of over 2000 highly skilled employees from around the world, and has earned a global valuation of $5 billion, adding to our reputation as one of the world’s fastest growing tech startups,” the company said on its website.
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digitimes.com
Tsinghua Unigroup new fab construction kicks off
Shinee Wu, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES
2-3 minutes
Tsinghua Unigroup new fab construction kicks off
Thursday 18 October 2018
China's state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup has already begun to implement its new fab projects in Nanjing and Chengdu as part of its memory business expansion. The new manufacturing sites are designed for monthly output of 300,000 12-inch wafers each, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Tsinghua Unigroup already has an existing manufacturing site in Wuhan, currently operated by subsidiary Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC). Tsinghua Unigroup in 2017 disclosed plans to establish IC manufacturing sites in Wuhan, Chengdu and Nanjing, with total investment reaching US$70 billion.
Tsinghua Unigroup broke ground for its US$30 billion plant in Nanjing on September 30, the sources said. The plant will be engaged mainly in the manufacture of 3D NAND flash and DRAM chips, and will be built in two phases.
The first phase of the Nanjing plant will bring in monthly production capacity of 100,000 wafers, with about US$10.5 billion set to be invested in the facility construction, the sources noted.
On October 12, Tsinghua Unigroup broke ground for another new memory plant, the sources indicated. Located in Chengdu, the plant will be built with US$24 billion in total investment and will have 12-inch 3D NAND flash production lines installed.
In addition, Unigroup Guoxin Microelectronics under Tsinghua Unigroup plans to transfer its entire 100% stake in Xian UniIC Semiconductors, which specializes in the design and development of DRAM chips, to UNIC Memory Technology under Tsinghua Unigroup. It marks Tsinghua Unigroup's move to integrate resources to enhance its memory business competitiveness, according to market observers.
Founded in August 2017, UNIC Memory Technology will be able to enhance its DRAM offering after merging with UniIC Semiconductors, the observers indicated. Meanwhile, Guoxin Microelectronics will be allowed to stay focused on its security chip business, the observers said.
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digitimes.com
Serious talent shortage posing challenges for China IC development
Cindy Yu, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES
2-3 minutes
Despite China's semiconductor industry aggressively carrying out diverse development projects, increasingly serious talent shortage is casting clouds over the development, making it a pressing issue for IC players in the country to introduce talent from abroad, especially amid the escalating US-China trade conflicts, according to industry sources.
The sources said many of the first-generation executives at China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), including founder Richard Chang and CEOs David Wang and Simon Yang, left the company to set up IDM or steer the development of DRAM or flash memory chips at other China semiconductor businesses.
As semiconductor investment projects are no longer concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, more and more mid- and high-ranking professionals are badly needed to handle management, operation and technology development at IC fabs at other Chinese cities.
Industry experts estimate that China's semiconductor industry will see a talent shortfall of up to 400,000 people by 2020, more than the existing total employment force in the industry.
Wang Zhihua, deputy dean of the Institute of Microelectronics at Tsinghua University, estimated that if China's semiconductor wants to realize the production value of CNY1 trillion (US$144.27 billion) by 2020, a total of 700,000 employees are needed to support the production if based on the per capita output value of CNY1.4 million a year, compared to the current workforce of only 300,000.
In Jiangsu province alone, the semiconductor talent shortfall is expected to exceed 100,000 by 2020, not to mention the shortfalls seen in new semiconductor bases including Wuhan, Chengdu and other cities in central and mid-western China.
Besides cultivation of local talent, the best way to address talent shortfalls is to enforce massive introduction from abroad. Huawei, for instance, has introduced at least 6,000 engineers from overseas, and SiEn (Qingdao) Integrated Circuits has sourced one third of its engineers from Taiwan.
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China recruiting engineering talent in Taiwan IC design industry
Wednesday 17 October 2018
Senior engineers and executives at Taiwan-based IC design houses are being targeted by China-based firms looking to enhance their homegrown technology capability, according to industry...
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https://digitimes.com/news/a20181016PD208.html
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image-sensors-world
RoboSense Announces China’s Largest-ever Round of Financing for a LiDAR Company
3-4 minutes
PRNewswire, Thomas-PR: RoboSense announces the completion of China’s largest-ever single round of financing for a LiDAR company – a combined investment of over $45 million (RMB 300 million). The investors include Cainiao Smart Logistics Network Ltd. (“Cainiao”), the logistics arm of the Alibaba Group; SAIC Motor Group (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation), the largest publicly-traded auto manufacturer in China’s A-Share; and BAIC Group (Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co.) electric vehicle company.
Robosense claims to have an over 50% market share of all LiDAR sold in Asia becoming the market leader in the region. The new funding will be used to increase RoboSense’s market share and the R&D of autonomous vehicle technologies, including its solid-state LiDAR, AI sensing algorithms, and other advanced technologies, as well as accelerating product development, long-term manufacturing and market penetration.
“The rapid development of autonomous driving has ignited a huge demand for LiDAR,” said Mark Qiu, co-founder of RoboSense. “RoboSense is embracing this market demand through partnerships with multiple industry leaders. It is our great pleasure to be endorsed and funded by industry giants from many different fields. This round of funding is not only for capital assistance, but also for strategic resources. We are looking forward to continuously working with our partners to lead the large-scale commercialization era of the autonomous driving industry.”
IHS Markit predicts that by 2035, global sales of self-driving cars will reach 21 million vehicles, up from nearly 600,000 vehicles in 2025. IHS believes that by 2035, nearly 76 million vehicles with some level of autonomy will be sold globally.
Autonomous logistics vehicles are expected to become one of the first markets for autonomous vehicle technology. Based on data from Deloitte’s China Smart Logistics Development Report, the intelligent logistics market will reach $145 billion (RMB 1 trillion) by 2025.
In the past two years, RoboSense has had explosive growth:
- In April 2017, the company started the mass production of its 16-beam automotive LiDAR.
- In September 2017, the company mass-produced its 32-beam LiDAR, released a LiDAR-based autonomous driving environmental sensing AI system, and provided a software and hardware combined LiDAR environment sensing solution.
- In October 2017, RoboSense launched its MEMS solid-state LiDAR, publicly exhibited for the first time at CES 2018 in January 2018.
- In April 2018, RoboSense partnered with the Cainiao Network to launch the world’s first MEMS LiDAR autonomous logistics vehicle – the G Plus.
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