SAN FRANCISCO — Last week, shares of Apple did something they rarely do: they fell nearly 7 percent, in two days. The unusually sharp drop, which was twice as large as the decline in technology shares over all, was driven in part by worries over the impact that the crisis in Japan would have on Apple’s ability to make its blockbuster products. It didn’t help that the iPad 2, the latest Apple gadget that everyone seems to want to get their hands on, appears to be in increasingly short supply, a situation Apple has found itself in before. The two factors are unrelated, at least for now. Any problems affecting Apple’s supply chain in Japan will not affect finished products for weeks, analysts say. But some investors fear that Apple’s challenges in meeting demand for a product like the iPad 2 will simply get worse in the months to come as some critical components are delayed. Many companies would be happy to have Apple’s problem of high demand for their products. And on Monday, Apple’s shares bounced back, gaining more than 2.5 percent; on Tuesday, they gained another 0.56 percent. But Apple, like other technology companies, is at risk of being buffeted by the unfolding crisis in Japan. Every major computer and consumer electronics maker relies on components that directly or indirectly come from Japan. Apple’s success, though, combined with its recurring difficulties in meeting the demand for some its hottest products, including the iPad and iPhone, have prompted investors to single out the company. “Fear is affecting Apple in particular,” said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. “This is a company with tight supplies, and the fear is that they will get even tighter.” Figuring out the precise impact on Apple of the disruptions in Japan is more art than science. The company, which declined to comment for this article, is intensely secretive about its supply chain. While other companies typically don’t talk about whom they buy parts from, analysts say Apple takes secrecy particularly seriously and will cut off any supplier that it suspects of being loose-lipped. That has left analysts piecing together bits of information dribbling out of Japan about certain parts or suppliers. In a series of sometimes-conflicting reports, they have focused on a handful of iPad components. On Monday, for example, analysts highlighted a new concern: 300-millimeter wafers, which are silicon disks used to manufacture essential chips for the iPhone and iPad. A factory operated by Shin-Etsu in Shirakawa, in northern Japan, produces at least 15 percent of the world’s supply of the wafers, said Gus Richard, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, and is not likely to become operational for a long time. “Will it affect Apple today or tomorrow?” Mr. Richard said. “No. But everyone is worried about those wafers. At some point, chip makers will run out.” Last week, the focus was elsewhere. On Thursday, IHS iSuppli, which is known for its “teardowns” of new Apple products — taking them apart as soon as they come out to analyze their components — identified five parts that it said could be affected. They included the flash storage, memory chips, an electronic compass, batteries and glass used in the touch screen. Underscoring the challenges with its analysis, iSuppli said that the glass was only likely to come from Japan, and that it might have failed to identify other Japanese components in the device. Other analysts said last week that they were concerned about the supply of BT resin, a product used to produce circuit boards for iPhone and iPad chips, manufactured primarily by a Mitsubishi facility in Japan that was temporarily shut down. “Part of it is a guessing game,” said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. Mr. Hargreaves was among those who played down the impact of the crisis on Apple. Mr. Hargreaves noted that Apple would be first in line to receive components like flash storage and memory chips. He also noted that the prices of those components, while likely to rise, were still lower than in 2010. Like many others, though, Mr. Hargreaves was cautious. “The biggest thing we don’t know is how long will the disruptions last,” he said. With supplies for the iPad 2 and the iPhone tight, even a short-lived disruption could have an effect. Apple has not said how many of the new iPads it has sold since it went on sale on March 11. Analysts estimated that the number was around 500,000 in the first weekend. After that, sales slowed to a trickle, even as demand remained strong. Apple stores have been resupplied daily, but in small amounts. Mr. Munster said a large group of people lined up overnight at the Apple store in New York’s meatpacking district one day last week. Only the first 20 people were able to buy an iPad. Another Apple store, at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, received just six iPads on a recent day, while a Target store received 15, he said. On Apple’s own Web site, the waiting time for new orders has increased to four to five weeks, from two to three weeks. On Friday, the company plans to begin selling the iPad 2 in some two dozen countries. While Apple is certain to have earmarked units for the international debut, no one outside of the company knows how many. Analysts said they were unsure whether serving a bigger market would worsen supply problems. Apple has faced challenges in meeting demand as far back as 2004, when it first released the iPod Mini. The iPhone has been in tight supply since Apple introduced it in 2007. And only in the most recent quarter, Apple managed to end the backlog for the original iPad. “This is a problem that Apple has had since 2004,” Mr. Munster said. “They are doing a better job than before, but they still can’t make enough.” Mr. Munster predicted that the delay for online orders of the iPad 2 would extend to six or seven weeks by summer.
The earthquake and subsequent tsunami have impacted the entire automotive industry supply chain in Japan, including the infotainment segment. This will have worldwide repercussions for the car electronics and infotainment businesses. Japan in 2010 accounted for 35 percent of the $31.5 billion worldwide automotive infotainment electronics market. The country produced $11 billion worth of infotainment electronics during the year. Japanese manufacturers in 2010 were responsible for 32 percent of the $22.9 billion worldwide market for automotive semiconductors. The country’s automotive chip production amounted to $7.3 billion in 2010. Key automotive components produced in the affected area of Japan include semiconductors, liquid crystal displays (LCD) and optical sensors. Chip suppliers are expected to encounter difficulties in obtaining and distributing raw materials and in shipping out products. This is likely to cause some disruption in automotive semiconductor supplies from Japan during the following weeks, if not months, particularly if suppliers rely on single-sourced solutions. Northeastern Japan, the worst-hit area following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, is also home to many semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities. Renesas Electronics, Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor and Fujitsu all are important suppliers to the auto industry and have been affected. Tier 1 automotive infotainment electronics suppliers operating in Japan have reported varying impacts of the earthquake. However, many of these companies also have manufacturing operations in other locations such as Mexico, so the total impact of the production disruption on output is unclear. Production facilities that depend upon a steady supply of components—especially microelectronics devices—will experience material and/or component shortages of varying degrees. As mentioned above, single source products will have a greater impact than those that rely on multiple sources. A number of sources said that in many cases inventory can make up for immediate component needs and that most suppliers have a good understanding of how long it will take before they run out of parts. At this point, suppliers also are considering alternative supply sources, but this is not an option in some cases. The global electronics business has been affected on a large scale and also will have an impact on the automotive industry worldwide in some shape or form and, therefore, could affect non-Japanese car original equipment manufacturers (OEM) as well. The lengthy process of rebuilding or replacing the power generated by the nuclear reactors could complicate industrial output for months. Japan's automakers have stopped auto production at several plants to conserve the region's power. There has been a 10 percent reduction in electrical capacity, which will have some impact on the country’s capability to make products of any type. For non-Japanese automotive OEMs, the impact of the earthquake on their supply chains could be delayed, as Tier 1 manufacturers assess their supplier situations. BMW, VW, Continental and Bosch all have removed their expatriate employees from Japan. This has an effect on productivity in Japan, and some ongoing programs are likely to be seriously interrupted—if not canceled altogether.
Intel bares technical details of Sandy Bridge Posted:25 Feb 2011
Intel Corp. has used the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) to reveal further technical details of its 32nm Sandy Bridge processor. In a presentation made on February 22, the company thoroughly described the processor's modular ring interconnect, the design techniques used to minimize the cache's operational voltage and the inclusion of a debug bus for monitoring traffic on the interconnect. The 32nm Sandy Bridge processor integrates up to four x86 cores, an optimized GPU, and DDR3 memory and PCI Express controllers on the same die, according to the paper presented at ISSCC by Ernest Knoll, a designer at Intel's design center in Haifa, Israel. Sandy Bridge features 1.16 billion transistors and a die size of 216sq mm, Knoll said.
The Sandy Bridge IA core implements several improvements that boost performance without increasing power consumption, including an improved branch prediction algorithm, a micro-operation cache and a floating point advanced vector extension, according to the paper. The devices' CPUs and GPU also share the same 8MB level-3 cache memory, as stated in the paper. Although the L3 cache units are organized in four slices along with the x86 cores, 2MB per core, they are fully shared with the GPU, Knoll added. Sandy Bridge's ring interconnect fabric connects all the elements of the chip, including the CPUs, the GPU, the L3 cache and the system agent. Because the ring interconnect is modular, the four-core die can easily be converted into a two-core die by "chopping" out two cores and two L3 cache modules, according to Knoll's presentation. The initial version of Sandy Bridge is available in two- or four-core variations. "By simply 'chopping' two slices, we get to another level of die," Knoll said. Intel provided the first details about the Sandy Bridge family of heterogeneous processors at the Intel Developer Forum last September. Intel introduced the first Sandy Bridge products, the second generation of the company's Core processor family, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Some of the devices have been shipping since early January and Intel expects them to be incorporated into more than 500 laptop and desktop PC designs this year.
Minimize power consumption Because Sandy Bridges' x86 cores and L3 cache share the same power plane, Intel faced the challenge that the minimum voltage needed to keep the L3 cache data may have limited the minimum operating voltage of the cores, increasing the power consumption of the system, according to the paper. Intel got around this issue by developing several circuit and logic design techniques to minimize the minimum operational voltage of the L3 cache and the register files of the chip to bring it to a lower level than the core logic, according to the paper. "One of the design targets was to minimize as much as possible power consumption," Knoll stated. One of the techniques used to skirt the issue was a shared p-channel MOSFET technique that weakens the memory cell pull up device effective strength that solves the problem of RF write-ability degradation at low voltages that can be created by manufacturing process variations, Knoll said. Sandy Bridge's power dissipation ranges from 95W for a four-core device operating in a high-end desktop to17W for a two-core Sandy Bridge running an optimized mobile product, according to the paper. Sandy Bridge also introduces a debug bus that allows monitoring the traffic between the x86 cores, GPU, caches and system agent on the processor internal ring. The bus, dubbed the Generic Debug eXternal Connection (GDXC), allows chip, system or software debuggers to sample ring data traffic as well as ring protocol control signals and drive it to an external logic analyzer, where it can be recovered and analyzed, according to the paper. Sandy Bridge also includes two different types of thermal sensors to monitor the temperature of the die, according to the paper. One is a diode-based thermal sensor on each core that compares the diode voltage to output the temperature, providing information for throttling, catastrophic function and fan regulation. The second is a much smaller CMOS-based thermal sensor with a more limited temperature range that can be placed at several locations inside the core to provide an accurate picture of core hot spots, according to the paper. Earlier this year, Intel discovered a design flaw in one of the support chips for the first quad-core version of Sandy Bridge that began shipping January 9. The company came up with a quick fix for the issue and temporarily halted shipments of the support chip. Intel later resumed shipments of the flawed chip to PC suppliers that were implementing it in systems where the flaw would not be an issue.
New car shipments, increased on-board electronics to boost automotive IC sales The rapid motorization of China and other emerging markets along with recovery in the U.S. automotive market, coupled with growing demand for on-board electronics, will help propel the automotive IC market up 12% in 2011, to $17.2 billion. This follows a 45% increase in automotive IC sales in 2010 (Figure 1), which halted a two-year slide in the automotive IC market. According to the 2011 edition of IC Insights' IC Market Drivers report, global shipments of new cars are expected to rise almost 5% in 2011 to 55.8 million units. The U.S. auto market is emerging from its recessionary downturn. Meanwhile, sales of new cars in China outpaced new car shipments in the U.S. by 50% in 2010--a trend that is expected to continue through mid-decade!
Figure 1 Automobiles are a fertile environment to implement new and innovative electronic systems and ICs. Many of these systems are competitive selling points for automakers. Growth drivers for ICs over the next several years include active safety and telematics systems, communications and entertainment convergence, and "green" initiatives such as energy savings and reduced emissions. These technologies are increasingly available as standard equipment on new cars across all price ranges. In the area of safety and telematics, systems such as self parking, active cruise control, lane departure warning systems, and electronic stability control--ESC, have been widely implemented in Japan and Europe. Some of these systems will soon be required for all new cars sold in the U.S. An ESC system typically consists of three sensors--a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and a pressure sensor--all of which can be made using a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) process. Highlighting the move to convergence, automakers are testing systems that will allow smartphones to dock with a large display on the car's center console allowing the driver to access the Internet, listen to his or her stored music, and send text messages through a large, onboard touchscreen rather than using the phone itself, and essentially replacing radio/CD/nav systems on cars sold today. Shipments of electric and hybrid vehicles, which only a few years ago were counted on to boost automotive IC sales, are not expected to be a significant contributor to the automotive IC market in the immediate future. In fact, relatively stable gasoline prices led to a decline in hybrid vehicles sales in 2010. Shipments of hybrid and electric vehicles are forecast to increase a modest 8% in 2011. Through 2014, the automotive IC market is forecast to grow to $20.9 billion, representing an average annual increase of 14.5% per year from 2009 to 2014. That growth rate tops the IC growth rate in all other system markets including computer (11.7%), communications (8.1%), and consumer (10.6%) systems, and the total worldwide IC market (10.6%) over the same time period.
A “blue paper” is what Morgan Stanley calls its 96-page report today on the prospects for tablet computing, authored by numerous analysts, including Kathryn Huberty, Mark Lipacis, Adam Holt and Ehud Gelblum. The big picture: people don’t appreciate how big tablet computing can get, write the authors. They project shipments of more than 100 million by 2012. (To put that in perspective, analysts have been projecting Apple may ship between 30 and 40 million units of its iPad this year, and the entire industry may ship 50 million, according to several published estimates.) The team did multiple surveys that they say canvassed 8,000 consumers and 50 corporate CIOs. The findings show, they write, that tablets are set to be taken up by two thirds of corporations in 2011, either through direct purchase or allowing employees to take up the machines personally within the firewall. And the writers were “surprised,” they note, by what the data said about International demand: “While consensus views the tablet market as largely a U.S. consumer phenomenon, the international consumer survey data surprised us.” Demand in major developed economies, phrased in the survey as “extreme interest in purchasing a tablet in the next 12 months, was higher than in the U.S., with only 11% of U.S. respondents surveyed saying yes, but 15% in France, 16% in Japan, 18% in Germany, 20% in the U.K., and a whopping 41% in China. And the overall international demand was 21%. And while only 20% of tablet owners use the machines for content creation (as opposed to viewing, listening, etc.), below 56% on laptops, the authors “believe the rate of introduction of new mobile applications and faster processors could increase these figures over time.” The best-positioned companies in this are the dominant tablet companies or the arms merchants: Apple, ARM Holdings, Broadcom, Samsung, and SanDisk. The worst-positioned, in the view of Morgan Stanley’s team, are Advanced Micro Devices, Dell , Lexmark, and Ricoh. And that bears a little explaining: Leaving aside AMD and Dell, Morgan Stanley believes tablets will actually help push users more toward the “paperless office,” and so they write that cannibalization of printing supplies is a much-understated potential area for cannibalization, and that that could hurt Ricoh and Lexmark.
Nearly 56 million tablets are expected to be produced in 2011. A new report from DisplaySearch uses information and trends from the display manufacturing industry to forecast an increase of more than 200 percent over 2010 tablet shipments.
Getting Apple, Samsung, Motorola or other tablet vendors to spill figures on expected sales is like pulling teeth in most cases - and understandably so. Announcing that you expect to sell 10 million, and then only selling one million can be rather humiliating. But, if the vendor never makes any upfront prediction, one million can be heralded as a victory.
Behind the scenes, though, the vendor still has to have some ball park numbers in mind. It has to be able to manage the logistics of manufacturing and shipping however many tablets it expects to sell, which begins with ordering enough parts to make them in the first place. With a little sleuthing, paying attention to backend suppliers can provide enlightening details about what the industry has in store. That is how DisplaySearch is able to weigh in on the growth of the tablet market.
"The upcoming product announcements, introductions and demonstrations in the coming weeks will build on the tremendous momentum that the market has already seen and will lead to segmentation in the tablet (slate) PC market," said Richard Shim, mobile computing analyst for DisplaySearch. "This segmentation translates to significant shipment growth and proliferation in the short and long term."
DisplaySearch expects that 7in and 10in tablets will continue to dominate the tablet size options. In order to deliver a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio, some tablet vendors will adopt 10in widescreen displays.
DisplaySearch also suggests that the explosion of the tablet market will cannibalize the netbook and low-end notebook markets. Intel may be inadvertently fanning those flames with the recent glitch with the Sandy Bridge chipset. As the variety of tablets grows, and the functions and capabilities of those tablets expand, the continue to encroach on the realm of netbooks and notebooks.
Some analysts have projected that Apple alone plans to produce nearly 50 million iPads in 2011. If true, that would mean that Apple alone would account for nearly 86 percent of the total tablets predicted by DisplaySearch. Either the Apple estimate is wildly high, rival tablets have very timid production plans, or the DisplaySearch figure is on the low end.
Suffice it to say that all signs indicate that 2011 will truly be the year of the tablet, and possibly the beginning of the end for netbooks.
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