This year, the global semiconductor industry faced a turbulent period. The fluctuating market capitalization ranking is an example. The’semiconductor empire’ Intel slipped to fifth place. TSMC, which sold only Hanwoo Muls in foundry (consignment production of semiconductors), rose to the top 2, while Nvidia and ASML emerged as emerging powerhouses.
According to the semiconductor industry on the 25th, Intel’s market capitalization as of the 24th was $19.89 billion. It has plummeted 22.3% over the past year and 24.3% since the beginning of the year. Intel’s global semiconductor makers’ market cap ranking, which was third at the end of last year, fell two places.
Intel’s crash has a lot of its own. In July, it shocked the market by announcing that the production period for the 7nm (nanometer, 1nm = 1 billionth of a meter) process was delayed by six months for its flagship central processing unit (CPU). Customers are showing signs of departure by declaring’developing their own chips’. Apple started to put its own developed M1 chip into the’Mac’, not an Intel CPU. Google, Amazon, and Facebook also started developing AI chips. Industry analysts say “The Intel alliance is falling apart.”
NVIDIA, a graphic processing unit (GPU) specialist, is considered the most noticeable company this year. Not only games and PC products, but also artificial intelligence (AI) GPUs were affected. It started to take over the UK’s ARM, which is called’a fabless among semiconductor design companies’. This year, the stock price soared 120.9%, and the market capitalization rose vertically to the world’s third largest ($32.72 billion).
The market capitalization ranking of ASML, a Dutch semiconductor equipment maker, is also showing a sharp rise. As of the 24th, it beat Intel with 202.51 billion dollars. ASML is a company that produces extreme ultraviolet (EUV) exposure equipment, which is essential for ultra-fine processing. The price per unit exceeds 150 billion to 200 billion won, but it is not enough to sell. It entered the foundry process of Samsung Electronics and TSMC, and the range of applications is recently expanding to DRAM production.
Reporter Hwang Jeong-soo [email protected]
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