We’ve been talking about the shortage of integrated circuits and the race to build more production capacity for over a year, but maybe there’s more to this story. News out of Taiwan suggests that production capacity for mature ICs is exceeding demand, and price reductions are coming. Companies like SMIC in mainland China and smaller firms there and in Taiwan are dropping prices over 10% as demand falls. Given that the CHIPS Act was just passed in the United States and companies are making huge investments around the world, what’s happening here? This and more on this week’s episode of the Rundown.
0:51 – NetApp Cloud Exec Departs for Palantir
It’s time for Anthony Lye to migrate. The head of NetApp Cloud has decided to move on to a new adventure with Palantir. Lye has been instrumental in turning the SS NetApp ship to focus more on cloud, both by developing their nascent cloud offerings and making some key strategic acquisitions to ensure they storage giant is poised to have products that resonate with an audience that is focused on things that aren’t spinning any longer. How successful was Lye for NetApp? How about growing their cloud revenue from less than $1 million per year to over $500 million per year? No word yet on who will step into his shoes.
Read More: NETAPP CLOUD LEAD ANTHONY LYE DEPARTS FOR PALANTIR
4:31 – Meta Can’t Spare a Second
You got a second? Apparently, Meta doesn’t. Everyone is probably familiar with a leap year, the every-four-years habit of adding one more day to February to make the calendar work. In recent years we have also started adding an occasional leap second to the year to keep time measurements accurate. This additional second on December 31st has happened a couple of times in recent memory in 2015 and 2016 and caused issues with computer systems both times. There is already a plan from the ITU to discuss removing the leap second next year. Never one to wait, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced they think an extra second is a bad idea and they’d like to see it go. The concept their engineers discussed instead is smearing, where the extra second is spread across 17 hours on December 31st to avoid having an extra second. No word on whether or not this smearing concept would allow them to more easily access a locked-out data center.
Read More: Meta proposes doing away with leap seconds
8:05 – Micron NAND is All About Layers
Just like a good croissant, Micron has built a new treat that has tons of layers. The storage maker has announced a new 232-layer NAND Flash offering that is the first in the industry to cross the 200-layer boundary. The reported specs of the unit are impressive, especially in the areal density of the chips. The real world impact will be to have more flash available for small devices such as portable video game systems and mobile phones. Other makers like Samsung are racing to complete their 200-layer offerings by the end of 2022. Stephen, is stacking the NAND like this going to lead to better performance?
Read More: First out of the gate: Micron wins the 200-plus layer NAND production race
11:22 – Rogers Spending Big to Clean Config Woes
Remember a couple of weeks ago when Canada went offline? The culprit was Rogers Communications, one of the biggest providers of service in the Great White North. They have released a statement about what happened and pledged to do better. Per CEO Tony Staffieri, the ultimate cause of the issue was a configuration issue that forced too much traffic through the core routers in the ISP. The result was approximately half of Canada’s users being forced offline, as Rogers provides not only Internet service but also mobile phone coverage as well. Rogers has a lot of egg on their face and they are spending to fix the issues. Rogers will spend $10 billion loonies over the next three years to fix current issues and provide oversight so this never happens again.
Read More: After config error takes down Rogers, it promises to spend billions on reliability
14:57 – SK Group Wants to Go Big on Chips
SK Group, the South Korean chip juggernaut, has announced a big investment in chipmaking in the US. The firm, which has previously gobbled up quite a few lines of business from US compnaies, has unveiled plans to sink $15 billion into chip research along with an additional $7 billion in battery development and charging station tech. This, of course, comes as the US Congress is trying to finalize the CHIPS act, a huge package designed to bring more chip manufacturing on-shore to entice companies such as Intel and Samsung to build more high tech parts here instead of overseas where supply chain disruption potential could cause issues in the tech sector like we’ve already been experiencing over the past year. The SK Group package is expected to create around 11,000 jobs by the time everything is finished in 2025. Stephen, is SK Group going to be able to get in on the CHIPS action? Or is this a play to force the bill through Congress?
Read More: SK Group vows $22 bn new capex in U.S., $15 bn to go to chip packaging facility
19:04 – Chipmakers in China Report Reduced Demand and Lower Pricing
SK Group, the South Korean chip juggernaut, has announced a big investment in chipmaking in the US. The firm, which has previously gobbled up quite a few lines of business from US companies, has unveiled plans to sink $15 billion into chip research along with an additional $7 billion in battery development and charging station tech. This, of course, comes as the US Congress is trying to finalize the CHIPS act, a huge package designed to bring more chip manufacturing on-shore to entice companies such as Intel and Samsung to build more high tech parts here instead of overseas where supply chain disruption potential could cause issues in the tech sector like we’ve already been experiencing over the past year. The SK Group package is expected to create around 11,000 jobs by the time everything is finished in 2025.
Read More: Foundries reportedly adjusting capacity expansion plans in 2H22
Read More: Wafer foundry mature process price reduction
27:13 – The Weeks Ahead
Networking Field Day Service Provider 2 – August 3 – August 4, 2022
Tech Field Day Extra at VMware Explore US 2022 – August 29 – August 31, 2022
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. It broadcasts live on Facebook every Wednesday at 12:30pm ET. To watch along, “Like” our Facebook page. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
