IP, EDA, and Foundry Players Stand to Benefit
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at hwdoh@nhqv.com. -- Ed.
Baidu’s semicon arm, Kunlun, has recently attracted investment totaling around W2tn. Apple and ByteDance are also in the process of beefing up their semicon design capabilities. This accelerating trend towards in-house semicon design bodes well for IP, EDA, and foundry industry players.
Baidu’s Kunlun attracts hefty investment
An IT industry trend towards the strengthening of in-house chip design capabilities is accelerating. The Chinese Internet search engine company, Baidu, recently announced that it has completed a round of fundraising for its AI chip unit, Kunlun, with the aim of developing machine learning computational semiconductors. Media reports are saying that Kunlun is being valued at around US$2bn. Of note, Kunlun unveiled its 818-300 and 818-100 machine learning computing chips in 2018, and its K200 processor in 2020.
We point out that the Kunlun processor is manufactured by Samsung Electronics’ foundry 14nm process, applying an interposer package, with two 512GB/s bandwidth 16 GB capacity HBMs. It supports INT 4/8 and INT/FP16 operations. Each cluster has 16 cores, and each device possesses 16MB of on-chip memory. The processor supports machine learning frameworks such as PaddlePaddle, Tensorflow, and Pytorch.
Apple and ByteDance beefing up their semicon design capabilities
Apple is planning to open a 30,000m2 European Silicon Design Center in Munich in 2022. The Munich design center plans to research and develop APs, 5G modem chips, and next-generation wireless technology. Of note, Apple is currently developing and using mobile APs for iPhones and iPads and M1 processors for MacBooks. Down the road, it is aiming to independently design and use 5G modem chips and high-performance desktop processors.
ByteDance, the operator of video sharing platform TikTok, has started recruiting engineers to design semiconductors for servers based upon ARM architecture.
These developments suggest that the recent IT industry trend towards in-house semiconductor design is speeding up. This direction bodes well for IP, EDA, and foundry industry players, all of whom are needed to design semiconductors. Related beneficiaries are to include Cadence, Synopsys, TSMC, and SEC.