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

Fujimi (5384 JP): Geared to Silicon Wafer Demand

Silicon Wafer Soitec Up Sharply on Strong Earnings

Silicon Wafers- The Golden Goose That Keeps on Giving

A Brief Analysis Of The Current Semiconductor Growth Cycle

Intel Sees Solid 2H17; Implications to Cloud/ Memory Demand and Competitions

Challenges and Risks Ahead for Intel Part 3; New Addressable Market for Samsung and TSMC

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)

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

<p>After a decade-long period of declining ASP's, the price of silicon wafers bottomed out in mid-2016 and has been on an upward trajectory ever since. To put this in context, in 2007 silicon wafers represented about 5% of the global semiconductor market by value. By 2016 this had dropped to just 2%. This reversal of fortunes is indeed good news for a troubled industry that has consolidated from some 25 players two decades ago to the current situation where the top 5 wafer manufacturers supply over 90% of the market.</p><p>What lies beneath this recovery and is it likely to continue? The latest silicon area shipment figures for Q2 2017, details from Semi <a href="http://www.semi.org/en/second-quarter-2017-silicon-wafer-shipments-increase-quarter-over-quarter-continue-ship-record" target="_blank">here</a>, showed a 4.2% increase from the previous quarter- and a 10.1% increase from the same quarter last year. For 2017, silicon wafer shipments are expected to grow by 5.1%- impressive- but just under 50% of the growth rate for overall semiconductor sales as we saw in  <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/insights/a-brief-analysis-of-the-current-semiconductor-growth-cycle" target="_blank">A Brief Analysis of the Current Semiconductor Growth Cycle. </a> Why this disparity? In this Insight, we will go through a brief history of the silicon wafer industry, look at the key players and examine in detail the factors that are contributing to both the current growing shipments and the rising prices. </p>

After a decade-long period of declining ASP's, the price of silicon wafers bottomed out in mid-2016 and has been on an upward trajectory ever since. To put this in context, in 2007 silicon wafers represented about 5% of the global semiconductor market by value. By 2016 this had dropped to just 2%. This reversal of fortunes is indeed good news for a troubled industry that has consolidated from some 25 players two decades ago to the current situation where the top 5 wafer manufacturers supply over 90% of the market.What lies beneath this recovery and is it likely to continue? The latest silicon area shipment figures for Q2 2017, details from Semi here, showed a 4.2% increase from the previous quarter- and a 10.1% increase from the same quarter last year. For 2017, silicon wafer shipments are expected to grow by 5.1%- impressive- but just under 50% of the growth rate for overall semiconductor sales as we saw in  A Brief Analysis of the Current Semiconductor Growth Cycle.  Why this disparity? In this Insight, we will go through a brief history of the silicon wafer industry, look at the key players and examine in detail the factors that are contributing to both the current growing shipments and the rising prices. 

Silicon Wafers for Semiconductors - Ugly Duckling Turns Golden Goose