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CHIP TECH
Intel gets lift from earnings, investors look past chip flaw
by Staff Writers
San Francisco (AFP) Jan 25, 2018


SK Hynix posts record quarterly net profit
Seoul (AFP) Jan 25, 2018 - The world's second-largest memory chipmaker SK Hynix saw profits nearly double to hit a record in the fourth quarter on strong demand, it said Thursday.

Net profit leaped 98 percent year-on-year to 3.22 trillion won ($3 billion), the South Korean firm said in a regulatory filing, as expanding data centre capacities and smartphone memory sizes drove chip prices higher.

Shares in the firm rose 4.7 percent to close at 75,800 won Thursday.

"Market conditions were favourable in the fourth quarter thanks to strong demand for servers and price hikes for products for mobile devices," the firm said.

Sales soared 69 percent to 9.03 trillion won during the October-December period, it said, with operating profits reaching 4.47 trillion won -- up 191 percent and beating market expectations.

The strong performance came despite the impact of a strengthening won.

"This is somewhat better than we expected," Greg Roh of HMC Investment Securities told AFP.

"SK Hynix is reaping the fruits of its early, large-scale investment in facilities and aggressive research and development efforts," he added.

Operating profits would be similar in the first three months this year, Roh expected, despite him also forecasting a four per cent quarter-on-quarter fall in sales due to readjustment of stocks.

For full-year 2017, net profit soared 260 percent on-year to 10.64 trillion won and operating profit powered up 319 percent to 13.72 trillion won, on the back of sales growing 75 percent to 30.1 trillion won.

"SK Hynix's performance eased market concerns over a possible downturn in the global semiconductor market," said Seo Sang-Young, an analyst with Kiwoom Securities Co.

SK Hynix said it will expand its range by applying new technology to its products for servers and solid state drives to meet increasing demand for internet data centres.

In a conference call, the company said it had invested 10.3 trillion won last year, a record high.

It expected this year's investment figure to be even higher, driven by a new plant in Cheongju, in central South Korea, and expansion of its existing Chinese facility in Wuxi. It also has a manufacturing site in Incheon near Seoul.

Analysts said SK Hynix benefited from price increases in DRAM chips, as global IT companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook increased their data centre capacities, and smartphone memory sizes expanded.

DRAM chips accounted for three-quarters of SK Hynix's total sales last year, with the rest going to NAND flash chips.

SK Hynix is the world's second largest DRAM maker with a global market share of 28 percent, behind number one Samsung Electronics, which has 45 percent.

SK Hynix also has 10 percent of the world NAND flash chip market, putting it in fifth place.

A stronger-than expected earnings report Thursday lifted Intel shares as investors looked past a troubling computer chip flaw weighing on the US tech giant.

Intel shares climbed more than four percent to $47.13 in after-market trades that followed release of its earnings figures, despite its warning of lawsuits, claims, and negative publicity from security vulnerabilities including recently disclosed Spectre and Meltdown flaws.

For the fourth quarter, Intel posted a loss of $700 million due to some $5.4 billion being set aside to pay taxes on repatriation of profits from overseas.

Intel reported record revenue of $17.1 billion in the final three months of last year, and said its annual revenue hit an unprecedented high of $62.8 billion.

"2017 was a record year for Intel with record fourth-quarter results driven by strong growth of our data-centric businesses," said chief executive Brian Krzanich.

Intel estimated that revenue in the current quarter would be about $15 billion, and for this year to total some $65 billion.

Krzanich also said new chips being developed would fix the vulnerabilities disclosed for its current products -- flaws which have raised concerns because they are in hardware instead of software.

"We are working to incorporate silicon-based changes to future products that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in hardware," Krzanich said during an earnings call with analysts.

The products "will start appearing later this year," he said.

Intel early this week called for a halt in deployment some patches for a troubling vulnerability in its computer chips because they could cause "unpredictable" problems in affected devices.

Intel posted a list of chip models that could be tripped up by the patch, meant to prevent hackers from taking advantage of so-called Meltdown and Spectre flaws to steal data.

"They may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior," Intel data center group executive vice president Navin Shenoy said in an online post.

Intel and other computing giants are facing inquiries from lawmakers and regulators about the disclosure of the chip flaw, and Krzanich may face questions about a large stock sale ahead of the public disclosure.

gc/rl

Intel

CHIP TECH
TU Wien develops new semiconductor processing technology
Vienna, Austria (SPX) Jan 24, 2018
Extremely fine porous structures with tiny holes - resembling a kind of sponge at nano level - can be generated in semiconductors. This opens up new possibilities for the realization of tiny sensors or unusual optical and electronic components. There have already been experiments in this area with porous structures made from silicon. Now, researchers at TU Wien have succeeded in developing ... read more

Related Links
Computer Chip Architecture, Technology and Manufacture
Nano Technology News From SpaceMart.com


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