Chip Market Research ServicesThe ducks are lining up for the New Year• Order activity for semiconductor equipment jumped a point to a warm 81 degrees after cooling off slightly over the holidays • SOC Mobile and Memory led the pack while the other segments finished nearly flat from the previous week • VLSI’s Chip Price Performance Index extended its gainsSemiconductor AnalyticsLast Week in the Semiconductor Market:Semiconductor sales were 3% above 2019 for the last week of the year. The IC weather cooled 14?F, as the normal arctic holiday chill set in. IC Demand in Silicon Wafers peaked in early December. With the exception of the COVID slump in March, 2020’s trend was well above 2019.Semi Market results from last week: • The 4Q20 Semiconductor Sales Nowcast: finished 4Q20 at + 5%, well above 2019• Semiconductor Weather1 Report: Temperate• IC Supply-Demand2 Metrics: Tight• Electronics Pricing Trend: turned up as holiday demand overwhelmed existing supply.Chip History CenterIntel's Birth May 1968: Robert (Bob) Noyce and Gordon Moore: The decision that would change the course of semiconductor history. It was a sunny California day when two men met at a home on Loyola Drive in Los Altos. It would have looked like any weekend front-yard meet-up. Robert (Bob) Noyce had been mowing his lawn. Gordon Moore had just popped over. Yet it was more than just a simple chat …Intel introduces its first product August 1969: The 3101 SRAM with this press release. It was part of Moore’s “Goldilocks strategy,” to develop three technologies at once. Features included “fast access times of 50 nanoseconds” … and … “power dissipation of 6 milliwatts-per-bit.” It was priced at $99.50 each, or a whopping $1.56 per-bit. This was cutting edge performance, circa 1969 …Lam Research AutoEtch 480: the system that built the company. A landmark in the history of equipment and it was one of the first single wafer, load-locked plasma etchers. Its market success proved it was one of the best etchers of the day. Introduced in 1981, just a year after the company’s founding, this would be one of the key products to build Lam into a giant in the semiconductor industry. It marked a substantial divergence from what was available at the time. As Lam put it, “AutoEtch 480 has been …Semiconductor StocksVLSI's Semiconductor Stock Indices kicked off the new year with a bang, all indices soaring to new highs.• Semiconductors +6%• Equipment +8%• EDA +1%• Electronic Materials +7%VLSI’s Semiconductor Stock Index was led up 5.9% by MagnaChip Semiconductor, which got a boost after announcing its new identity as a pure-play standard products company. SK hynix and SMIC also performed well this week.IDM +6.1%Foundry & OSAT +7.1%Fabless & Fablite +5.6%VLSI’s Semiconductor Equipment Stock Index was led up 7.8% by Nikon and Veeco Instruments. Nikon was elevated by the announcement of TSMC’s plans to build an advanced packaging facility in Japan.WFE +9.2%Test +7.8%Assembly +2.1%VLSI’s EDA Stock Index was led up 0.6% by Synopsys.VLSI’s Electronics Materials Stock Index was led up 6.5% by DuPontHottest Stocks: MagnaChip Semiconductor, SK hynix, Nikon, DuPont de Nemours, Veeco Instruments, and SMIC
