After entering 2020, the global economic situation has been worrisome due to the impact of the epidemic. However, the semiconductor industry has become a major highlight in the sluggish economic environment due to its position at the top of the industrial chain and strong technical skills. The entire industry has recovered from the impact of the epidemic before the global economy and is showing a relatively vigorous development trend. There are two highlights worth paying attention to: firstly, semiconductor manufacturing represented by wafer foundry is unusually popular, and several major manufacturers have shown unprecedented prosperity in capacity utilization and revenue, becoming industrial stars; The second is mergers and acquisitions. It seems that the more economic downturn, the higher the cost-effectiveness generated by mergers and acquisitions. Among the multiple mergers and acquisitions this year, the most representative are two billion dollar level buyouts, namely ADI buying MAXIM and NVIDIA buying ARM, which were officially announced on September 13th.

The peak of mergers and acquisitions in the global semiconductor industry occurred in 2015 and 2016, when the total amount of annual mergers and acquisitions exceeded $100 billion. It was precisely from then on that the global semiconductor industry, especially advanced regions and shopping malls represented by the United States, began to enter a period of industrial and enterprise integration, and semiconductor enterprises and formats showed a trend of evolution from decentralization to centralized integration.

At present, the hot new usage represented by 5G, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence (AI) was still in its infancy around 2015, and the development situation and prospects are not as bright as today. Perhaps based on this professional background, the semiconductor industry merger and acquisition whirlwind that swept around the world that year mainly focused on "stock" malls, which were the target of the merger and acquisition, Most of them are already experienced companies and their skills and products (here we will only talk about mergers and acquisitions between pure semiconductor companies, where buyers value purely the underlying skills and products. Examples such as SoftBank's $32 billion purchase of Arm in 2016 are not included in the review plan, as such mergers and acquisitions are mainly for capital operation considerations rather than using the underlying skills and products for my own use).