The serious shortage of global mature process chips has been verified again. The strategy of the world's advanced chairman, who specializes in 8-inch foundry, said yesterday (August 3) that the market for mature foundry processes is so hot that customers have come to sign long-term supply contracts with the world and submit prepayments for "guaranteed production capacity". This is the first case of a mature wafer foundry signing a long contract with customers, highlighting the hot market and customer competition for production capacity in the mature wafer foundry market.
The mature production capacity of foundry has been in short supply since the second half of last year, and most fabs have signed contracts with customers "month by month" and "quarter by quarter". Because the market demand is stronger than expected, the industry has reported that foundry prices not only rise on a quarterly basis, but also have the way of "competitive bidding for production capacity and winning for the highest bidder".
At present, first-and second-line wafer generation plants are increasing their investment in mature process (node ≥ 40nm) production capacity, especially 28nm, which can meet most of the IC requirements. TSMC plans to increase the monthly production capacity target of the Nanjing plant's 28nm expansion plan by 1.5 times, the largest mature process expansion in nearly seven years. UMC has previously said that capital expenditure this year will reach 1.5 billion US dollars, an increase of 50% over last year, mainly for the expansion of 28nm production capacity.
In addition to wafer foundry, many semiconductor factories have also expanded their investment. For example, Intel will return to the wafer foundry industry, and memory chip manufacturer Hynix will expand its investment in wafer foundry.
However, this new capacity has not yet been released. UMC even said that there will be no significant increase in production capacity in the market in the past 1-2 years, and the shortage of production capacity in mature processes will not ease until 2023.
Mature processes are mainly used to manufacture medium and small capacity memory chips, analog chips, MCU, power management (PMIC), analog-digital mixing, sensors, RF chips and so on. The rapid rise of new demand for new energy, 5G, AIoT and other chips provides a strong driving force for mature processes.
It is understood that the characteristic process is the main battlefield of the mature process. Compared with the advanced process, the penetration rate of the characteristic process in the wafer foundry business mode is relatively low. In terms of traditional logic devices, except Intel, the main manufacturers basically adopt the division and cooperation mode of "design-foundry-closed testing", while in the field of analog devices, MCU and discrete devices, they are still mainly produced by IDM. This makes more room for the expansion of the OEM business of the mature process.
In this context, mature process foundry is expected to be the first to benefit. In addition, Zhao Naidi, an analyst at Everbright Securities, said that increasing production in mature processes will boost the localization of semiconductor materials. The growth rate of wafer foundry capacity in mainland China is the highest in the world, and the expansion capacity structure is biased towards mature processes. Therefore, the R & D pressure on semiconductor materials enterprises has been alleviated, in the case of rapidly growing market demand. Domestic enterprises are expected to improve their penetration among downstream customers by virtue of high-performance semiconductor products that have achieved mass production or advanced R & D progress.
