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Top semiconductor sales leaders H1 2020, in million dollars

Rank 1 Rank 1 Company 1H20 1H19 Change (%) H20 H19

1 1 Intel 38,951 32,038 22 2 2 Samsung 29,750 26,671 12 3 3 TSMC 20,717 14,845 40 4 4 SK Hynix 13,099 11,558 13 5 5 Micron 10,624 10,175 4 6 6 Broadcom 8,109 8,346 -3 7 7 Qualcomm 7,857 7,289 8 8 10 Nvidia 6,525 4,674 40 9 8 TI 6,241 6,884 -9 10 16 Hisilicon 5,220 3,500 49 Top-10 total 147,093 125,980 17

Source: IC Insights

Compared to the  rst half of last year, the sales of the ten biggest semiconductor companies surged by 17 percent in the  rst half of 2020 – more than three times the industry-wide 5 percent increase.  ree top-10 companies saw their sales jump by a whopping 40 percent or even more. TSMC, ranked third behind Intel and Samsung, mainly pro ted from a surge in sales of 7nm application processors to Apple and Hisilicon. Nvidia, at rank 8, strongly recovered from a ‘crypto hangover’: after seeing demand for graphics cards explode during the cryptocurrency mining boom, Nvidia’s sales were in the doghouse for quite a while when the boom ended. And  nally, a 49 percent sales increase catapulted Huawei’s chip subsidiary Hisilicon into to the top 10, though its time in there may be short in light of US sanctions. PvG

Artifi cial intelligence David Attenborough narrates Reddit threads

Garett MacGown decided that the world cannot not do without Sir David Attenborough’s narration. Using audio samples obtained from Youtube, the software programmer employed machine learning to mimic the sonorous voice of the British wildlife documentary broadcaster, now aged 94, and had him read out loud content on the community website Reddit, including threads on relationship advice. It’s not exactly the most riveting material, but the result, most people will agree, isn’t bad at all.  ough the somewhat tinny sound gives away the fact that the audio is computer generated and there are some strange mispronunciations, there’s de nitely an Attenborough-esque quality to it.  e deepfake was created using Google’s text-to-speech software, improved by employing a software-generated voiced model trained on Attenborough’s real speech. PvG

Innovation Corona prompts meteoric rise of health passport in Hype Cycle

Technologies rarely enter the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies with a 5-20 percent market penetration, but this year, one did: health passports.  is is mostly because of widespread adoption in populous countries such as China and India, where large numbers of citizens and visitors are required to use an app that indicates Covid-19 status if they want to use public transportation, for ex

Credit: Gartner

ample. Gartner currently classi es health passports as being on the “peak of in ated expectations” but expects them to reach the “plateau of productivity” in less than two years. Other emerging trends to watch, according to the market researcher, include beyond-silicon electronics (such as carbon-based transistors and DNA computing and storage), the ‘digital me’ (digital representations of people) and algorithmic trust (models that ensure privacy and security of data). PvG

Semicon A death sentence for Huawei

 e global chip and smartphone industries are bracing for a major disruption after the American government yet again tightened restrictions for Huawei. US sanctions already made it impossible for the telecom company to design its own chips – because that requires software from American companies – or to have them manufactured at TSMC – because the foundry uses American semiconductor equipment for that.  at still left Huawei with one option: buying o -the-shelf chips.  is escape route has been all but cut o now that the US also requires a license for the sale of any chip developed or produced using US technology to the battered Chinese company. “Huawei is probably  nished as a maker of 5G network equipment and smartphones once its inventories run out early next year,” stated Gavekal Research in a report.  is, in turn, will hit Huawei suppliers, though the impact may be (partially) o set by competitors regaining market share. PvG