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

G-20/Tech War/Consumption/Carrefour Quits/Bonds

China Semiconductor Progress & Opportunities Review 2020

Trade War/ Economy/ Taiwan/ Human Rights/ Virus

Semiconductor Memory- China Progress And Prospects Review Q2 2018

China's New Semiconductor Thrust - Part 1: Why and How?

US Export Ban On China's Jinhua. Winners & Losers.

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)

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

Tensions created by the stalled US-China trade talks along with the recent US embargo on selling to Huawei has shone a spotlight once again on China's efforts to design and manufacture its own supplies of key electronic components, most notably DRAM and NAND. To that end, a recent <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-set-to-produce-first-locally-designed-DRAM-chip" target="_blank">report</a> in the Nikkei Asian Review tells us that a Chinese company founded in 2016 is about to become the country's first mass producer of locally designed memory chips, set to compete in DRAM with the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. That company is Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), previously known by a plethora of other names including Innotron, Hefei Rui-Li and Hefei Chang Xin. The report quotes CXMT CEO Zhu Yiming as saying last month that CXMT's DRAM design was recently modified and is now based on technology from Qimonda, a descendant of German chipmaker Infineon that filed bankruptcy in 2009. Apparently, this was in an effort to avoid the fate of another aspiring Chinese DRAM manufacturer, Fujian Jinhua, which was indicted by the US authorities on charges of IP theft back in November 2019. On the surface, this sounds plausible and quite sensible. However, the reality is China's path to developing its own DRAM technology base is a tangled and convoluted web which does not bode well for its future success and leaves us resolutely bearish. Here's why.

Tensions created by the stalled US-China trade talks along with the recent US embargo on selling to Huawei has shone a spotlight once again on China's efforts to design and manufacture its own supplies of key electronic components, most notably DRAM and NAND. To that end, a recent report in the Nikkei Asian Review tells us that a Chinese company founded in 2016 is about to become the country's first mass producer of locally designed memory chips, set to compete in DRAM with the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. That company is Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), previously known by a plethora of other names including Innotron, Hefei Rui-Li and Hefei Chang Xin. The report quotes CXMT CEO Zhu Yiming as saying last month that CXMT's DRAM design was recently modified and is now based on technology from Qimonda, a descendant of German chipmaker Infineon that filed bankruptcy in 2009. Apparently, this was in an effort to avoid the fate of another aspiring Chinese DRAM manufacturer, Fujian Jinhua, which was indicted by the US authorities on charges of IP theft back in November 2019. On the surface, this sounds plausible and quite sensible. However, the reality is China's path to developing its own DRAM technology base is a tangled and convoluted web which does not bode well for its future success and leaves us resolutely bearish. Here's why. 

China's DRAM Ambitions. As A Convoluted & Tangled Web Unfolds, We Remain Resolutely Bearish.