[Core News] A fire broke out in a Micron factory in Taiwan, China, DRAM quotation remains to be seen

1. 1. A fire broke out in a Micron factory in Taiwan, China, and DRAM quotations remain to be seen.

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According to Taiwan Business Times, a fire broke out at Micron's No. 1 Factory (Houli Factory) in Taiwan at 5:34 pm on the 20th. Gas leaked and white smoke came out. When the fire department arrived, factory personnel had put out the fire on their own. No one was injured in the accident. The specific cause of the fire still needs to be further clarified and investigated.

As of 9:30 p.m. that day, Micron Taiwan had not officially responded to the matter.Judging from the market situation, the recent DRAM spot price performance has been flat and decoupled from the contract price trend. The core reason is that the end market demand has not yet recovered.Regarding the potential impact of the fire on DRAM spot prices, people in the memory industry said that the cause of the fire has not yet been determined, and DRAM prices have generally stabilized recently. At the same time, there are products from other brands such as Samsung in the market, so the specific impact remains to be seen.

As one of the top three international DRAM manufacturers, Micron has a global market share of approximately 19.2%, and 65% of its DRAM products are produced in Taiwan.At present, Micron has begun mass production of the 1-beta process, and the 1-gamma technology introduced using the EUV process is also under continuous research and development. The Taiwanese and Japanese R&D teams are collaborating to promote related technological breakthroughs, which shows that it occupies an important position in the global memory industry.

2. Winbond increases niche memory prices by about 20% in the second quarter

According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily citing the China Taiwan Electronic Times, as demand in the memory industry gradually recovers, storage manufacturer Winbond increased the price of niche memory by about 20% in the second quarter.At present, the capacity utilization rate of Winbond's Kaohsiung and Taichung plants has fully returned to normal levels. This trend has directly led to a significant improvement in its profits in the second quarter and successfully made up for the losses in the first quarter.The industry expects that the traditional peak season in the second half of the year will further boost Winbond's operations, and its performance in the second half of the year is expected to achieve double-digit growth compared with the first half.

3. Research: Silicon carbide power components are growing strongly, with ST’s share exceeding 30%, ranking first

According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, TrendForce Research shows that the global SiC (silicon carbide) power component industry will maintain strong growth in 2023, driven by pure electric vehicle applications. The top five SiC power component suppliers together account for 91.9% of the overall revenue. Among them, ST (STMicroelectronics) continues to lead the industry with a market share of 32.6%, and ON Semiconductor has jumped from fourth place in 2022 to second place.

TrendForce analysis believes that demand from fields such as AI servers will show a significant increase in 2024, but factors such as a significant slowdown in sales of pure electric vehicles and weakening industrial demand are having a certain impact on the SiC supply chain. It is expected that the annual growth rate of global SiC power component industry revenue in 2024 will significantly converge compared to the past few years.It is worth noting that competition in the global conductive silicon carbide substrate market will intensify in 2024. Wolfspeed maintains the first place with a market share of 33.7%, and Chinese manufacturers Tianke Heda and Tianyue Advanced rank second and third with 17.3% and 17.1% respectively. Industry reshuffle continues to advance [7].

4. UMC releases 22eHV process for mobile phone AMOLED driver chips

Wafer foundry UMC (United Microelectronics for short) recently officially announced that in order to cater to the growing demand for AMOLED screens in the smartphone field, it will be the first to launch a 22nm embedded high-voltage (eHV) process platform.Compared with the 28nm eHV process, this new process reduces energy consumption by up to 30%. Its new display driver chip (DDIC) solution not only has the smallest SRAM bits in the industry, which can effectively reduce the chip area, but also significantly accelerates the processing speed and response time of high-resolution images.

UMC has decades of experience in DDIC wafer technology development and manufacturing, and is the world's first wafer fab to mass-produce 28nm small-size panel DDIC.Small-size panel DDIC is the core control chip that drives AMOLED and OLED screens, and is widely used in smartphones, tablets, Internet of Things devices, virtual/augmented reality equipment and other fields.Currently, UMC’s global pure wafer foundry market share in 28nm small-size panel DDIC has exceeded 90%.In addition, UMC has successfully completed the automotive Grade-1 platform design specifications under the 22nm process platform architecture, and completed reliability and durability verification, further expanding the application scenarios of the process.

5. Hong Kong Customs seized 596 smuggled high-end CPUs

According to Kuai Technology News, Hong Kong Customs disclosed that on June 11, a chip smuggling case was successfully uncovered and 596 high-end CPU processors were seized. The CPU involved was trying to be smuggled into mainland China.At that time, customs staff discovered that a vehicle heading to the Shenzhen Bay Control Point was acting suspiciously, and immediately stopped it and conducted an X-ray inspection. Finally, they found the hidden CPUs in the mezzanine of the car.