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

Shenanigans Alert On Upbeat Intel 10nm Report From A Research Firm You've Probably Never Heard Of

Intel Restructures, Retires Senior Executive & Rejects Rumored 10nm Cancellation.

Intel. It Was The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times

AMD, Intel And The Spectre Of A Looming Opteron-Style Meltdown

Intel's Potential $720 Million Holiday Season Gift To AMD

AMD- Why Ryzen Desktop Surges But Mobile Lags

TSMC May Have Another New Customer. Intel.

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)

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

Last week, on September 28'th, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/16764" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:16764:1">Intel</a>'s interim CEO and CFO Bob Swan issued an open letter addressing recent public speculation about a growing shortage of the company's processors. According to Swan, Intel will at least have the supply to meet the full-year revenue outlook of $69.5 billion announced in July, a level which was $4.5 billion higher than the company's initial January expectations.The announcement served to reassure investors, sending the share price up over 3%. Meanwhile AMD fell by 5.22%, presumably on the basis that they have less market share to gain from Intel than previously anticipated. Apart from confirming that the company was prioritizing the production of Xeon and high-end Core processors, essentially the high-performance segment of the market, the announcement provided little else of any substance. There was no information about when the current supply shortage could be expected to ease and no change in the update on 10nm progress. The harsh reality is that the supply shortage will not relent until Intel achieves volume production for its client processors on 10nm, something that the company has already stated we should not expect until H2 2019. Our thesis that Intel unwittingly gifted <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/19009" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:19009:1">Advanced Micro Devices</a> a holiday season windfall remains intact and is in fact reinforced. We anticipate that bonus will show up in the company's earnings later this month and to an even greater extent in their fourth quarter results and beyond.One additional, important datapoint to glean from Intel's update. The company is on track for record earnings in H2 2018. There may be shortages of client processors at the lower end, but the high end and server are both booming and they are precisely the segments with the greatest demand for both memory and storage. Thus, while Micron and its peers are likely to see lower bit growth for DRAM and NAND in their client PC segments in the short term, that shortfall will be more than compensated for by higher server unit shipments which also command higher margins.

Last week, on September 28'th, Intel's interim CEO and CFO Bob Swan issued an open letter addressing recent public speculation about a growing shortage of the company's processors. According to Swan, Intel will at least have the supply to meet the full-year revenue outlook of $69.5 billion announced in July, a level which was $4.5 billion higher than the company's initial January expectations.The announcement served to reassure investors, sending the share price up over 3%. Meanwhile AMD fell by 5.22%, presumably on the basis that they have less market share to gain from Intel than previously anticipated. Apart from confirming that the company was prioritizing the production of Xeon and high-end Core processors, essentially the high-performance segment of the market, the announcement provided little else of any substance. There was no information about when the current supply shortage could be expected to ease and no change in the update on 10nm progress. The harsh reality is that the supply shortage will not relent until Intel achieves volume production for its client processors on 10nm, something that the company has already stated we should not expect until H2 2019. Our thesis that Intel unwittingly gifted Advanced Micro Devices a holiday season windfall remains intact and is in fact reinforced. We anticipate that bonus will show up in the company's earnings later this month and to an even greater extent in their fourth quarter results and beyond.One additional, important datapoint to glean from Intel's update. The company is on track for record earnings in H2 2018. There may be shortages of client processors at the lower end, but the high end and server are both booming and they are precisely the segments with the greatest demand for both memory and storage. Thus, while Micron and its peers are likely to see lower bit growth for DRAM and NAND in their client PC segments in the short term, that shortfall will be more than compensated for by higher server unit shipments which also command higher margins.  

Intel's CPU Supply Shortage - The Harsh Reality Of A 10nm Misstep And Nothing But Upside For AMD

Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment

Intel's CPU Supply Shortage - The Harsh Reality Of A 10nm Misstep And Nothing But Upside For AMD