Artificial intelligence will become the next battle for semiconductor manufacturers
In recent years, the topic of the semiconductor market has never stopped. In the face of a vast and forward-looking AI business opportunity, although Taiwanese IC design companies have their own wishes, they are limited by the lack of internal software R&D resources, coupled with the limited performance of the CPU itself and the limited support capabilities of the platform, and can taste some markets. The first ones are probably still headed by MediaTek, creative service providers, and Shixin. Among them, MediaTek has succeeded in placing new orders for the global chip market for smart voice assistants, Amazon, Google, and mainland Internet giants. It is sufficient to allow MediaTek to double its shipments of artificial intelligence-related chip product lines in 2017; as for creativity, Shixin is also rushing to acquire many artificial intelligence chip development orders in the domestic domestic market, and mainland customers are rushing to use 7/10nm advanced process technology. It is enough to allow two Taiwanese design service companies to have a good year in 2017.
As for other Taiwan-based IC design companies, although the main chip business opportunities can't be found, but the peripheral interface chips and new application product business opportunities, and even continue the product development concept of the Internet of Things generations of product development, or let the Taiwan Department of Netcom chips, analog IC, etc. Chip suppliers have the opportunity to share a glass, even if not too much, for the Taiwanese IC design company, is still a new product, new market opportunities for development, at least in the so-called artificial intelligence generation, the company did not miss. The Taiwanese IC design industry emphasized that the short-term artificial intelligence application business is still biased towards platform-based promotion and the confrontation of application software camps. This is not the strength of Taiwan-based IC design companies. It is also rather limited. It is better to observe the emerging product design trend business opportunities for artificial intelligence applications, and then find another time to invest in resources.
However, MediaTek, as the world's fourth-largest and largest cross-strait IC design company, is certainly unable to wait. Xie Qingjiang, general manager of the company, had already understood that the era of artificial intelligence had come. The relevant design concepts and applications in the future will be quickly loaded into smart phones, smart housekeepers, smart TVs and other various 4C products. Chen Guanzhou, the company’s co-operation chief, also believes that AI itself is not a business but a new technology that is expected to be widely used in different end products. Whether it is to improve old products or create new businesses, AI will use a lot more. New or additional computing functions, when the semiconductor business opportunities will come out, the company can now do a good job, that is, thinking about low-power design or with the cloud interconnection technology to strengthen.
Taiwanese design service providers are also expected to rely on TSMC's advanced process technology to seize emerging opportunities in the development of artificial intelligence-related chips. Many brands, information providers, logistics companies, internet oligarchs, and even school units on the mainland have high interest in developing their own solutions for artificial intelligence applications. They also give priority to the production of TSMC.
Including creativity and Shixin from the mainland's artificial intelligence-related chip development case, it has almost exhausted all the R&D team resources of the two design service companies, reflecting the company's performance, it is also a significant increase in revenue growth rate. And rapidly rising gross margin performance. Creative Electronics also stated that new applications including artificial intelligence and machine learning have gradually become a consensus in the industry, and it is believed that the development of these technologies will be the next killer application for the global semiconductor industry.
