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

2019: A Zero-Margin Year for Memory Chips

Smartkarma's Week That Was in JP/KR: Machinery, Autos, Tesla/Tweets, and FamiMa Tender

Tesla’s Take-Private Plan – Never Mind

Learnings From The History Of Memory Part 1 - China's DRAM Dreams

Learnings From The History of Memory Part 4- The Insatiable Demand For NAND Flash

Learnings From The History Of Memory Part 5-  China's NAND Flash Mega-Billions Gamble

Learnings From The History Of Memory Part 3- The Amazing Resurgence of NOR Flash

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)

China's ambition to develop an indigenous semiconductor memory industry as a key tenet of its "Made In China 2025" initiative has understandably garnered much media attention over the course of the past three years. Since China's plans were made public, concerns about vast quantities of cheap, China-made memory flooding global markets, price wars and the general disruption of the status quo have abounded. Now that the initial hysteria surrounding those plans has faded, a clearer picture is emerging of an unfolding reality check characterized by schedule delays, obscure roadmaps and litigation, all serving to underscore the inescapable fact that there are no shortcuts when it comes to excellence in advanced technology node semiconductor memory manufacturing.At present, China's semiconductor ambitions are in a no-mans land, somewhere between the initial rush to allocate capital, announce, build and equip semiconductor fabs and the first tentative announcements of trial products that lag significantly behind their leading-edge competitors. At the same time, the opening salvos have been fired in intellectual property litigation that will doubtless continue for many years to come. Among the Chinese memory hopefuls, one company stands out. Tsinghua Unigroup-backed YMTC is the clear leader of the pack and, if their stars align, they have a reasonable shot at mass-producing a 64-layer 3D NAND product within the next three years.  In this Insight, we examine in detail China's semiconductor memory key players, their plans, their progress and of course, their prospects over the coming years. Our overall assessment? While much has been accomplished, far more remains to be done and accordingly, significant disruption of the status quo remains a distant, though not entirely implausible, scenario.

China's ambition to develop an indigenous semiconductor memory industry as a key tenet of its "Made In China 2025" initiative has understandably garnered much media attention over the course of the past three years. Since China's plans were made public, concerns about vast quantities of cheap, China-made memory flooding global markets, price wars and the general disruption of the status quo have abounded. Now that the initial hysteria surrounding those plans has faded, a clearer picture is emerging of an unfolding reality check characterized by schedule delays, obscure roadmaps and litigation, all serving to underscore the inescapable fact that there are no shortcuts when it comes to excellence in advanced technology node semiconductor memory manufacturing.At present, China's semiconductor ambitions are in a no-mans land, somewhere between the initial rush to allocate capital, announce, build and equip semiconductor fabs and the first tentative announcements of trial products that lag significantly behind their leading-edge competitors. At the same time, the opening salvos have been fired in intellectual property litigation that will doubtless continue for many years to come. Among the Chinese memory hopefuls, one company stands out. Tsinghua Unigroup-backed YMTC is the clear leader of the pack and, if their stars align, they have a reasonable shot at mass-producing a 64-layer 3D NAND product within the next three years.  In this Insight, we examine in detail China's semiconductor memory key players, their plans, their progress and of course, their prospects over the coming years. Our overall assessment? While much has been accomplished, far more remains to be done and accordingly, significant disruption of the status quo remains a distant, though not entirely implausible, scenario.  

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) (981 HK)

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC)

Semiconductor Memory- China Progress And Prospects Review Q2 2018