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

Autonomous Driving- Aptiv, A Near-Perfect Proxy

Autonomous Driving- Baidu, China's National Champion

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

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

Brazil Semiconductors and semiconductor equipment / Thematic (Sector/Industry)

While China lagged behind its global counterparts for many years when it comes to autonomous driving, that situation has changed dramatically over the past two years. Baidu is the clear leader in the sector among China's BATs. Indeed, the company was nominated by the Chinese authorities to act as the country's "national champion" for autonomous driving. Meanwhile, Baidu's peers, Alibaba and Tencent, are enthusiastically playing catch-up. For its part, Didi Chuxing, much like its US counterpart Uber, is also heavily invested in the technology and finding itself having to fend off recent BAT competition in a ride-sharing battle many thought the company had already won. Perhaps the most tangible sign that things are changing in China was the speed with which the authorities published self-driving regulations, first at local levels in Beijing, Shanghai and Chongquin followed quickly by national guidelines earlier in 2018. The guidelines are generally regarded as being both practical and innovative; in particular, the requirement for self-driving vehicles to first pass a comprehensive test prior to being allowed on public streets suggests lessons being learned from observations of the challenges being faced by the sector in the US. Apart from the internet and ride-sharing giants, China is also a fertile breeding ground for self-driving startups, many of them founded by former executives from Baidu and Google. Among these startups, Pony.ai, JingChi and Nio are leading examples of companies that are actively shaping the future of autonomous driving in China. Baidu's decision to open-source its self-driving software may well have been a game-changer, particularly in China. With over one hundred partners signed up just over one year since its launch, the speed with which the Apollo ecosystem has evolved is nothing short of amazing. The impact of Apollo can basically be viewed as the democratization of autonomous driving, drastically lowering the barriers to entry for a whole swathe of vehicle OEMs, particularly Chinese ones. Its net result can be seen in the rapid proliferation of self-driving pilots, with the King Long bus company's partnership with Baidu to develop their "Apolong" self-driving bus being a prime example. The collaborative environment facilitated by Baidu's Apollo platform sits well with China's penchant for a "Techno-Utilitarian" approach as described by Chinese AI-expert-turned-venture capitalist, Dr. Lee, who summarises it as follows:"Let’s get the product out there, iterate, collect data, fix things when they break, be very fast iterating, and be willing to change the laws when things are proven some other way."With an appalling track-record for road-accident-related deaths, heavily traffic congested cities and an ever-growing fascination with the automobile, China has a lot to gain from its investment in autonomous driving. Based on its rate of progress over the last two years, we foresee China surging ahead of its global counterparts.

While China lagged behind its global counterparts for many years when it comes to autonomous driving, that situation has changed dramatically over the past two years. Baidu is the clear leader in the sector among China's BATs. Indeed, the company was nominated by the Chinese authorities to act as the country's "national champion" for autonomous driving. Meanwhile, Baidu's peers, Alibaba and Tencent, are enthusiastically playing catch-up. For its part, Didi Chuxing, much like its US counterpart Uber, is also heavily invested in the technology and finding itself having to fend off recent BAT competition in a ride-sharing battle many thought the company had already won. Perhaps the most tangible sign that things are changing in China was the speed with which the authorities published self-driving regulations, first at local levels in Beijing, Shanghai and Chongquin followed quickly by national guidelines earlier in 2018. The guidelines are generally regarded as being both practical and innovative; in particular, the requirement for self-driving vehicles to first pass a comprehensive test prior to being allowed on public streets suggests lessons being learned from observations of the challenges being faced by the sector in the US. Apart from the internet and ride-sharing giants, China is also a fertile breeding ground for self-driving startups, many of them founded by former executives from Baidu and Google. Among these startups, Pony.ai, JingChi and Nio are leading examples of companies that are actively shaping the future of autonomous driving in China. Baidu's decision to open-source its self-driving software may well have been a game-changer, particularly in China. With over one hundred partners signed up just over one year since its launch, the speed with which the Apollo ecosystem has evolved is nothing short of amazing. The impact of Apollo can basically be viewed as the democratization of autonomous driving, drastically lowering the barriers to entry for a whole swathe of vehicle OEMs, particularly Chinese ones. Its net result can be seen in the rapid proliferation of self-driving pilots, with the King Long bus company's partnership with Baidu to develop their "Apolong" self-driving bus being a prime example. The collaborative environment facilitated by Baidu's Apollo platform sits well with China's penchant for a "Techno-Utilitarian" approach as described by Chinese AI-expert-turned-venture capitalist, Dr. Lee, who summarises it as follows:"Let’s get the product out there, iterate, collect data, fix things when they break, be very fast iterating, and be willing to change the laws when things are proven some other way."With an appalling track-record for road-accident-related deaths, heavily traffic congested cities and an ever-growing fascination with the automobile, China has a lot to gain from its investment in autonomous driving. Based on its rate of progress over the last two years, we foresee China surging ahead of its global counterparts.  

Autonomous Driving- China Is Surging Ahead