According to the report from MoneyDJ, Western Digital (WD), a well-known memory device manufacturer, reported its latest financial report after the American stock market closed on April 25. Both revenue and profit for 1Q24 were better than market expectations, mainly driven by the robust AI demand and cloud service providers’ proactive acts in AI investment, which significantly boosted data storage demand.

According to WD’s financial result for fiscal third quarter 2024 (ending March 29, 2024), revenue increased by 23% YoY to USD 3.46 billion, surpassing the expected USD 3.36 billion from LSEG’s survey. Gross margin rebounded to 29%, up 18.8 percentage points from the same period last year at 10.2%; Net profit turned from a loss to a gain of $110 million, or USD 0.34 per share, far better than the net loss of USD 580 million, or net loss of USD 1.82 per share in the same period last year. Excluding one-time expenses, adjusted earnings per share were USD 0.63.

Photo credit: WD

The main “Cloud” segment saw robust revenue growth of 29% in the third quarter to USD 1.55 billion, mainly fueled by enterprises’ acceleration and expansion of data center construction, stimulating memory demand growth, with prices also rising accordingly.

Its competitor Seagate, a HDD manufacturer, also reported impressive financial results on April 23, with last quarter’s performance beyond expectations. The company expected continued growth of AI-driven memory demand and give a positive business outlook for this quarter.

Looking ahead to fiscal fourth quarter 2024 (ending June 28, 2024), WD estimates revenue will be USD 3.6-3.8 billion; adjusted earnings per share are estimated to be USD 0.90-1.20.

WD previously announced the separation of its two main product divisions, HDD and NAND Flash. The NAND Flash division will be spun off into a new company and go public, and the transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2024. Moving forward, WD will focus on its core HDD business to bring greater value to shareholders.

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(Photo credit: WD)

Henri Richard, head of Rapidus Design Solutions, the US subsidiary of Japan’s semiconductor foundry startup Rapidus, and former Chief Marketing Officer at processor giant AMD, indicates that Rapidus aims to position itself as a filler of market gaps during the interview with global media The Register.

Rapidus Design Solutions, established by Rapidus in this month, is expected to bolster ties with US semiconductor design companies and wafer manufacturing technology providers like IBM. Henri Richard reportedly notes that the AI boom is boosting the advanced semiconductor foundry market, albeit with understated demand and ongoing capacity constraints. Thus, in this market trend, he asserts that even if these technologies don’t necessarily confer a competitive edge, the limitations in capacity alone should suffice to ensure Rapidus’ success.

Established in August 2022, Rapidus was jointly founded by eight Japanese companies, including Toyota, Sony, NTT, NEC, Softbank, Denso, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory Corporation), and Mitsubishi UFJ, who invested collectively in its establishment. As per Rapidus’ plan, they aim to commence mass production of 2-nanometer process technology in 2027, significantly lagging behind major global players like TSMC, Intel, and Samsung.

TSMC and Samsung previously planned to mass-produce 2nm chips in 2025, while Intel is anticipated to be the first to achieve commercialization of 2nm chips. Industry sources cited by the The Register’s report also view this timing as unfavorable for Rapidus.

However, Henri Richard believes that the semiconductor process technology has reached a turning point. Assessing the success of suppliers solely based on production timelines is narrow-minded; competitiveness stems from various factors beyond production schedules.

Based on these factors, Rapidus positions itself as a fill-in player in the advanced manufacturing market, targeting small AI chip design companies as its primary market. While competitors focus on serving large clients, Rapidus aims to win over these smaller clients by offering comprehensive support services. By serving numerous small chip design companies, Rapidus can better understand the specific needs of AI chip users, rather than insisting on the latest process technology for all chips.

Henri Richard emphasizes that Rapidus itself has limited scale and cannot initially serve too many clients simultaneously. It is expected that Rapidus’s initial client base will not exceed 6 companies, allowing them to accumulate experience and capabilities.

Although there are geopolitical issues currently, establishing facilities in the US is not on Rapidus’s immediate agenda. Meanwhile, Japan represents a relatively favorable geographic location for Rapidus, offering clients a risk-diversification option.

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(Photo credit: Rapidus)

Following the recent launch of the Arm-based PC platform processor Snapdragon X Elite, which received high market acclaim, Qualcomm is reportedly doubling down by venturing into server processors. This expansion is expected to further intensify the competition amid traditional server processor giants Intel and AMD.

According to a report from the global tech media Android Authority, following the launch of the Snapdragon X Elite/Plus processors, Qualcomm is internally developing a server processor with the codename SD1, featuring their custom Oryon cores.

Reportedly, Qualcomm’s next-generation server processor will be manufactured using TSMC’s 5-nanometer process (N5P), featuring 80 Oryon cores with a maximum clock speed of 3.8GHz, 16-channel DDR5 memory with a maximum transfer rate of 5600MHz, 70 PCIe 5.0 interface links, and support for CXL v1.1. It will use a 9470-pin LGA socket and support dual-socket server configurations.

Furthermore, the status of this project is currently unconfirmed, but Qualcomm partners reportedly received briefings about it at the end of 2021 and early 2022, aligning with previous rumors. This isn’t Qualcomm’s first foray into server processors; they previously launched the Arm-based Centriq series in 2017, which was discontinued a year later.

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(Photo credit: Qualcomm)

Qualcomm is actively entering the AI PC market with a new processor unveiled on April 25th, reportedly featuring Arm architecture and produced on a 4nm process, igniting a new battle in non-x86 architecture AI PC processors.

Industry sources cited by the report from Economic Daily News have anticipated that TSMC is behind this new chip from Qualcomm. Following this trend, major players like Apple, NVIDIA, and MediaTek will continue to release Arm-based AI PC processors, all likely manufactured by TSMC.

Since 2018, Qualcomm has introduced a series of chips like Snapdragon 8cx, 7c, 8c platforms, 8cx Gen 2, and 8cx Gen 3, targeting always-connected and mobile PC domains. After years of preparation, they’re capitalizing on the AI wave, with last year’s launch of Snapdragon X Elite, produced on TSMC’s 4nm process. Yesterday, they further expanded with Snapdragon X Plus, aiming for a larger share of the AI PC market.

Qualcomm claims both Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus feature customized integrated Oryon CPUs, outperforming competitors with 37% higher CPU performance and a 54% reduction in power consumption. During last year’s Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm introduced its in-house Oryon CPU, claiming that certain CPU performance metrics surpassed those of Intel and Apple chips.

Qualcomm previously mentioned that part of the Snapdragon X Elite’s GPU performance also surpasses competitors like AMD. Both Snapdragon X chips feature Hexagon neural network processors (NPU) capable of 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS), promising unprecedented performance, energy efficiency, and on-device AI capabilities for more Windows PCs.

Qualcomm emphasizes that the NPU’s performance supports new AI-optimized applications and features, including OBS Studio real-time captions, leveraging on-device Whisper functionality to instantly translate 100 spoken languages into 100 languages for live broadcasts.

According to Qualcomm’s official website, the Snapdragon X Elite features 12 cores with a maximum multi-thread frequency of 3.8 GHz, while the Snapdragon X Plus has 10 cores with a maximum frequency of 3.4 GHz.

Industry sources cited by the same report from Economic Daily News believe the Snapdragon X Plus will help Qualcomm capture the PC mainstream market. Qualcomm stated that OEMs are expected to launch PCs equipped with Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite starting from mid this year.

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(Photo credit: Qualcomm)

On April 24, Horizon Robotics, a Chinese autonomous driving solution provider,  officially released six chips of Horizon Journey™ 6 series, supporting low, medium, and high-scale intelligent driving applications. Among them, the Journey 6E/M chips feature computing power of 80 TOPS and 128 TOPS respectively; while the Journey 6P chip is suitable for intelligent driving in all scenarios, with a computing power of up to 560 TOPS.

The first cooperative auto companies and brands for the Journey 6 series chips include SAIC Moto, Volkswagen Group, BYD, Li Auto, GAC Group, Deepal, BAIC Group, Chery Auto, EXEED, VOYAH, as well as multiple Tier1, software, and hardware partners. Horizon stated that the Journey 6 series will start delivery of the first mass-produced model within 2024 and is expected to achieve mass delivery of over 10 models by 2025.

BYD’s director Mr. Wang Chuanfu made a surprise presence at the product launch. Assuming the development of new energy industry is a game, Wang thought that the first half of this game focused on electrification, and the second half will be on intelligence. If the first half is about batteries, then the second half will be chips.

It is reported that as early as 2021, BYD and Horizon had established a strategic cooperation relationship, and millions of BYD vehicles have been equipped with Horizon’s Journey 2, 3, and 5 series chips in 2024. As BYD will continue to integrate Horizon Journey 6 chips into its automobiles, the two parties will promote the popularization of advanced intelligent driving by deepening collaboration.

Amid the development trend of electrification and intelligence in automotive industry, intelligent driving chips will embrace vast growth. As to manufacturers, representatives from abroad include Tesla, NVIDIA, Mobileye, Qualcomm, and AMD, while Chinese manufacturers include Horizon, Black Sesame, and others.

Meanwhile, the research and production of intelligent driving chips also face technological and performance challenges. Due to the characteristics of automotive chips, intelligent driving chips are required to meet high stability and long lifespan under extreme conditions.

In addition, with the continuous development of autonomous driving technology, the performance and computing power requirements for intelligent driving chips are also constantly increasing, which requires chip manufacturers to pursue further innovation and breakthroughs in the future.

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(Photo credit: Pixabay)