半导体市场正在进入到一个周期性牛市中？是否有相关的事实根据？
总的来说，现有的证据看来是这样的。从好的方面来说，最近华尔街日报3月初报道显示费城证券交易所（ PHLX
）半导体行业（SOX）的指数相比低谷高出30％。PHLX
SOX是价格加权股指，由英特尔，美光科技公司，美国国家半导体，赛灵思等19个著名的半导体公司组成。
从不好的方面来说，英特尔对于第二季度的前景预测不能算好。此外， iSuppli公司发布了一些不理想的报告：
在讨论这一数据之前，就必须同意过多文件记载的事实——ASIC设计开始——因而研究——继续下降。这种下降与实际设计项目的数量相关，但与核心尺寸的大小或芯片的复杂性（继续上升）无关。芯片研究到达这一缓慢下降的趋势的阶段，使我们能够更清楚地了解每年的市场发展的模式。我们可以“忽略”这一总体下降的趋势，就像工程师从一个信号中删除直流偏置一样。换言之，我们可以减去它。
让我们回到图1代表的数据趋势。设计研究的实际数量和波动的平均值正呈上升趋势。后者是一个趋势的预测，显示下个月经济增长/下降的趋势。两个曲线都向上变化对市场来说是一个好消息。事实上，2009年第一季度比去年同期（2008年1季度）增长19％。事实上，今年第一季度开始看起来与2007年第一季度更像，而不是2008年（见图2）。
图2. 体系结构级芯片研究季度曲线，09第一季度相比08第一季度可能更像07第一季度
这是令人鼓舞的消息，因为它表明芯片供应商看到当前经济危机六到九个月之后，他们的产品需求将会增加。但哪个产品段由芯片体系结构研究的增长反映？虽然没有表示出来，相对应于图1中的总设计研究数据最接近的三个电子市场包括通讯，消费电子产品和数据处理（服务器）市场。
知道哪个市场在未来6至9个月有可能增长是非常有用的，但它不能够回答潜在半导体牛市反弹可能盈利多少这个更大的问题。这是由于需要从各个市场来理解利润率。如果目前电子产品的趋势是任意的，那么经济增长将发生在嵌入式而不是电脑的空间。这可能意味着制造商产品量高但利润率较低，因为嵌入式芯片价格低于同行PC销售的价格。尽管如此，一个较小的利润总比没有利润要好。
芯片设计研究的增加是由于季节性上升？半导体是否开始了周期性的牛市？只有时间才能告诉我们。
Exclusive Research: Looking Over The Chip Architect’s Shoulder To
Spot Next Bull Market
Is there any truth to the news that the semiconductor market is in
the beginning of a cyclical bull market?
Taken in total, the available evidence seems inconclusive. On the plus side, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) Semiconductor Sector (SOX) index remains up more than 30% from its low in early March, as reported recently in The Wall Street Journal. The PHLX SOX is a price-weighted stock market index composed of 19 well-known semiconductor companies like Intel, Micron, National Semiconductor, Xilinx and others.
On the negative side, Intel’s outlook for the second quarter was less than impressive. Further, iSuppli has released several disparaging reports:
* Nearly 60% of China Chip Manufacturing Goes Unused in Q1 ’09
* Reports of a Memory Market Recovery are Greatly Exaggerated
Still, most of this information is backward looking based on existing chip inventory data. What is the future trend for the next six to nine months? While no one can be sure, perhaps the best indicator can be found by looking over the shoulder of today’s chip architects. What are the leading chip design companies investigating in terms of new chip projects – early trade-off analysis at the architectural level? Data from an aggregation of leading IDMS and EDA design houses, now over 70K unique chip projects since 2005, suggests that chip design investigations are on the rise (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: The number of architectural investigations for future chip projects picked up significantly in the first quarter of 2009.
Before discussing this data, one must agree to the overly documented fact that ASIC design starts – and hence investigations – continue to decline. This decline relates to the actual number of design projects, but NOT to die sizes or chip complexity, which continue to rise. Leveling out this slow downward trend in chip investigations and starts allows us to more clearly spot year-to-year patterns. We can “ignore” this overall downward trend in the same way engineers remove a DC bias from a signal. In other words, we can subtract it out.
Let’s return to the data trends represented in Figure 1. Both the actual number and rolling average of design investigations are on the rise. The latter is a trend predictor that shows the growth/decline tendency for the next month. The upward movement of both curves is good news. In fact, this recent growth over the first quarter of 2009 represents a 19% increase from the same quarter (Q1 of 2008) last year. Indeed, the first quarter of this year is starting to look much more like the first quarter of 2007 rather than 2008 (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: A quarterly look at architectural-level chip investigations suggests that Q1 ’09 may be more like Q1 ’07 than Q1 ’08.
This is encouraging news since it suggests that chip vendors are looking beyond the current economic crisis to six-to-nine month timeframe when demand for their products will increase. But which product segments are reflected in this growth of chip architectural investigations? Though not shown, the three most sited electronic market segments corresponding to the total design investigation data in Figure 1 include communications, consumer electronics and data processing (server) markets.
Knowing which market segments are likely to experience growth in the next six to nine months is useful, but it doesn’t answer the bigger question of how profitable a potential semiconductor bull rally might be. The answer to that puzzle lies in understanding the profit margins associated with each market segment. If current trends in electronics are any indication, then growth will occur in the embedded but not the PC space. This could mean high product volume but lower profit margin for manufacturers, because embedded chips sell below their PC counterparts. Still, a smaller profit is better than no profit.
Still unanswered is whether this increase in chip design investigations is due to a seasonal rise or whether it indicates the start of a cyclical semiconductor bull market. Only time will tell.
原文出处：
作者：John Blyler 译者：与非网 李佳俊
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