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

Wave Computing. The Extraordinary Rise & Fall Of A Pioneering Silicon Valley AI Hardware Startup.

Intel. The Competitive Threat That Is ARM.

Intel Earnings Call - Solid Revenues Partly Thanks to COVID-19

Intel. Winning Streak Will Grind To A Halt In H2 2020

How Economics Will Undermine Intel's Processor Dominance

Intel. How Should We Interpret Jim Keller's Untimely Departure?

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

Equity Bottom-Up

<p>At their AI Summit held in November 2019, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/intel-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:16764:1" rel="noopener">Intel</a> touted the advantages of their forthcoming Nervana processors for both AI training and inference. Just over one month later, Intel announced the acquisition of Israel-based AI hardware startup, Habana Labs, a company which offers training and inference chips directly competing with Intel's Nervana offerings. Two months later, Intel quietly announced that they were discontinuing their Nervana product roadmap. This would not be the first time that Intel has rewritten its AI roadmap. In May 2019, having been the mainstay of Intel's foray into AI acceleration for almost a decade, Intel finally abandoned the entire Xeon Phi product roadmap.</p><p>Meanwhile, over the course of the past eight months, three of Intel's top AI hardware executives have left the company. These executive departures combined with the aforementioned product cancellations signal troubled times ahead for Intel's AI hardware roadmap. </p>

At their AI Summit held in November 2019, Intel touted the advantages of their forthcoming Nervana processors for both AI training and inference. Just over one month later, Intel announced the acquisition of Israel-based AI hardware startup, Habana Labs, a company which offers training and inference chips directly competing with Intel's Nervana offerings. Two months later, Intel quietly announced that they were discontinuing their Nervana product roadmap. This would not be the first time that Intel has rewritten its AI roadmap. In May 2019, having been the mainstay of Intel's foray into AI acceleration for almost a decade, Intel finally abandoned the entire Xeon Phi product roadmap.Meanwhile, over the course of the past eight months, three of Intel's top AI hardware executives have left the company. These executive departures combined with the aforementioned product cancellations signal troubled times ahead for Intel's AI hardware roadmap. 

AI Hardware. Executive Departures & Product Cancellations Signal Troubled Times For Intel's Roadmap.