Toshiba developed a model-based development (MBD) simulation technology that’s said to shorten verification time for its automotive semiconductors by up to 90%. MBD uses software to simulate models and evaluate performance in real time, helping product developers refine complex design processes, which the company said Tuesday is increasingly important as automotive equipment becomes more advanced. Toshiba will use the new technology to promote development of high-heat dissipation and low-noise automotive semiconductors, it said.

Comments are due Nov. 4 at the Bureau of Industry and Security in docket BIS-2021-0021 to help the secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security prepare a report to the White House on supply chain disruptions in the “critical sectors and subsectors” of the information and communications technology “industrial base” by the one-year deadline of President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order, says Monday’s Federal Register. The notice seeks information on the “needed capacities” of the U.S. for “ICT design and manufacturing of products and services, including the ability to modernize to meet future needs.” The agency wants the public to identify “gaps” in U.S. design and manufacturing capabilities, “including nonexistent, extinct, threatened, or single-point-of failure capabilities,” it says. Commerce and Homeland Security “are specifically interested in comments related to validation standards of component and software integrity, standards and practices ensuring the availability and integrity of software delivery and maintenance,” says the notice. They want to know what “security controls” are in place “during the manufacturing phase of ICT hardware and components.” The agencies seek “specific policy recommendations important for ensuring a resilient supply chain for the ICT industrial base.” The recommendations may include strategies for “sustainably reshoring supply chains," says the notice. It’s not the goal of U.S. chipmakers to “onshore everything,” Semiconductor Industry Association CEO John Neuffer told a Sept. 8 Center for Strategic and International Studies webinar (see 2109090001). “We’re trying to diversify our supply chains and spread out our risk.”

COVID-19 factory disruptions are exacerbating global supply chain woes in “a very, very fluid situation,” General Motors Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson told an RBC virtual investor conference Friday. “The global supply chain continues to deteriorate a little bit,” and has “worsened” the semiconductor shortage, he said. “Inventories have been very, very thin all year.” Lack of global wafer fab capacity was the big challenge at 2021's start, and disruptions in Southeast Asia “back-end processing facilities” are more recent headaches, he said.

Seagate’s supply chain issues are “very, very complicated,” CEO Dave Mosley told the Deutsche Bank 2021 Technology Conference Thursday. “Our devices have a lot of components in them,” and Seagate has “deep relationships” with all its suppliers. “We run factories 24/7 all quarter long, so we’ve got to make sure that those factories always have parts sitting in front of them.” The most critical disruptions have been from suppliers’ factories in Southeast Asia “being shut down temporarily” due to COVID-19 case spikes, said Mosley. “Even inside of our factories, we've had issues where the community had COVID problems.” Seagate worked “to get more than 80% of our people now vaccinated, and we're still working on communities around us, suppliers that we are very dependent on,” he said. “We're helping them get vaccinations. It's been a really, really difficult last quarter or two for the supply base that we have.” Seagate is “managing through” the global components shortages by “positioning inventory” strategically, and “having dual sources, things like that,” said the CEO. Freight and logistics concerns abound in various places around the world, said Mosley. “Not so much borders being locked down,” as happened at the “front end of the pandemic, but more just things getting bottled up in various locations,” he said. Inventory “has to be at the right place at the right time.” Said Mosley: “It's a challenging time for all supply chain people worldwide.”

No single company or country can “effectively produce semiconductors,” said Semiconductor Industry Association CEO John Neuffer on a Center for Strategic and International Studies webinar Wednesday about opportunities for U.S.-South Korea collaboration to bolster global supply chain resilience. “For better or for worse, and by far for better,” semiconductors are a “global business with global supply chains, and the last thing we should be doing is putting up barriers to innovation in our policies,” he said. East Asia produces “the most sophisticated, the most advanced semiconductors” in nodes below 10 nanometers, said Neuffer. Taiwan produces 92% of those devices, South Korea the rest, he said: “Do we want to put up barriers to that kind of innovation as we’re going forward with our manufacturing incentives or our other policies? No, I don’t think we do.” It’s not the goal of the U.S. semiconductor industry to “onshore everything,” said Neuffer. “We’re trying to diversify our supply chains and spread out our risk.” The industry doesn’t want to “create an environment” that encourages “important players like Samsung” -- a “massive’ U.S. investor -- to stay “offshore,” he said. “We want to bring the innovation onshore. That creates more competition here and helps us ensure that U.S.-headquartered companies again take the lead when it comes to the most advanced chips.” Samsung didn’t respond Thursday to requests for comment.

Analog Devices expects its newly acquired Maxim “portfolio” to contribute revenue of about $520 million in fiscal Q4 ending late October, said senior executives on a "special investor call" Wednesday about the transaction’s “capital allocation.” ADI completed the all-stock acquisition Aug. 26 after the Chinese gave their regulatory OK a week earlier. There’s “no doubt” that Maxim “right now is a bit more constrained than ADI” in capacity amid the global semiconductor supply shortages, said CEO Vincent Roche. “Over the last few quarters, they’ve been working diligently to add more capacity,” he said. “We’re prepared to inject the additional capital required to enable us to kind of expand the footprint of the front- and-back-end capacity.” Roche expects that “over the coming quarters, we’re going to see output increase from the Maxim part of the franchise,” he said. Maxim is “a bit more constrained than maybe some other players in the industry, given they have not added capital at the same extent that we have and some others,” conceded Chief Financial Officer Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. “There will be a catch-up on our part that we’re going to need to address in the coming quarters to improve their capacity and remove that constraint, given where the industry’s demand is.”

Semiconductors will account for more than 20% of the total bill of materials in the average premium vehicle by 2030 -- a fivefold growth rate from 2019, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told the IAA Mobility show in Munich Tuesday in his first in-person keynote address since taking the helm in February. Gelsinger predicted the total addressable market for automotive semiconductors will nearly double by the end of the decade to $115 billion, for more than 11% of the entire silicon TAM.

The House should pass legislation funding bills for addressing the semiconductor shortage “as soon as possible,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Thursday. He responded to reports that General Motors “plans to halt production temporarily at nearly all North American plants due to the shortage” of chips. He urged passage of S-1260, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (see 2106080074), which would fund Warner’s Chips for America Act.

Semiconductor company Marvell Technology “nearly tripled” its revenue from wireless carriers the past two years by “growing our overall market share” in 5G infrastructure, said CEO Matt Murphy on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q2 ended July 31. “We expect a sustained period of strong revenue growth from this end market driven by an increase in 5G deployments, which are still in the early stage of worldwide adoption.” Growth from 5G is expected to “significantly accelerate” in calendar Q4, he said. Marvell has substantially reduced its “dependence” on the consumer market, “which tends to be more volatile with shorter product life cycles” than the enterprise sector, he said. Its consumer operations now generate only 15% of Marvell revenue through its “de-emphasis” on PC components and the December 2019 sale of its Wi-Fi connectivity business to NXP, he said. “We have significantly increased our exposure to the data center and carrier end markets, which are characterized by long product life cycles, sticky design wins and multi-generational engagements.”

With the market “uncertainty” hovering around COVID-19, Cisco is “closely monitoring the delta variant and its impact on customer spending,” said CEO Chuck Robbins on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q4 ended July 31. “We are not seeing any additional impact on our business, aside from the components shortage we've been facing over the past several months.” Cisco expects the “supply challenges and cost impacts” to continue at least through the Jan. 31 end of its fiscal first half “and potentially into the second half,” he said. The company is navigating through the shortages by “leveraging our volume purchasing and extended supply commitments,” said Chief Financial Officer Scott Herren. The supply and demand “imbalances” in semiconductors and memory chips are turning into “higher component costs as we buy from those suppliers,” said Herren. “It takes a while for those costs to flow through our standard costing system and show up in the cost of goods sold.” Cisco imposed price increases Aug. 7 that were “very selective, very targeted, only on the products where we were seeing the higher component costs,” he said. The price hikes aren't motivated by driving “top-line” revenue growth “as much as they're motivated by offsetting some of the cost increases,” said Herren.