Recently, chips have begun to become scarce in all walks of life this year. Therefore, major wafer factories are actively expanding new factories and increasing production capacity.
As the world's largest chip foundry, TSMC's production expansion should be said to be the most aggressive. According to TSMC, it will invest US$100 billion in three years to increase production capacity.
In this regard, TSMC’s 28-nanometer wafer fab located in Nanjing, my country, had previously planned to expand production. After the expansion, it will increase its production capacity by 20,000 wafers per month.
However, Xiang Ligang suddenly stood up and expressed his opposition to TSMC's expansion of production in Nanjing. The reason he gave was that TSMC would use its competitiveness in 28 nanometers to attack mainland chip foundry companies.
Because TSMC has more advantages in terms of cost and production capacity.
A year later, news came from TSMC that TSMC has notified customers and called on them to move to 28nm and 22nm processes.
TSMC will no longer expand production of 40nm and above processes, but will expand production of 28nm processes by 50%, and said it will help customers make the transition.
For customers, shouldn’t 28nm be used?
It can be said that this is true to a certain extent, because the production capacity of TSMC's 40nm and above processes is likely to be unable to meet the needs of all customers, otherwise TSMC would not do this.
Did Xiang Ligang’s words come true? It has to be said that TSMC’s move may have some adverse consequences for our mainland chip foundries.
TSMC, as the world's largest chip foundry, occupies more than half of the market share. This means that the market share of all other chip foundries in the world combined is not as large as that of TSMC.
Therefore, TSMC’s notification to customers will have a certain vane effect on the development of the industry.
As a result, chips that originally used 40nm and above processes may be gradually transferred to 28nm processes.
However, our mainland chip foundries have only broken through 28 nanometers in recent years, while TSMC has been mass producing 28 nanometers for more than ten years. TSMC is also the first manufacturer in the world to start mass production of 28 nanometer processes.
Therefore, the R&D expenses of TSMC’s 28nm chips are now even lower when spread across each chip. Therefore, TSMC has a cost advantage. At the same time, because the mass production time is much earlier than that of mainland companies, it also has production capacity. Advantage.
So once customers gradually abandon 40nm and above processes, our mainland chip foundries will be difficult to accept too many orders due to limited production capacity, and may also suffer from TSMC's price reduction.
On the other hand, we still have some companies that have not achieved breakthroughs in the 28nm process. For example, Jinghe Integration, which has grown rapidly in recent years and has ranked ninth in the world, has only implemented the 55nm process on some products. 40 Nanotechnology is still under development.
If customers abandon 40nm and above processes, the results will not be optimistic.
Currently SMIC is the enterprise with the most advanced chip foundry technology and the largest production capacity in our mainland. However, according to the corporate financial report data released by SMIC, the revenue from 40 nanometer and above processes accounts for 81.4% of its revenue. %.
So we see that although the 40nm and above processes are relatively backward processes, they are still very important to our mainland chip foundries.
It is these seemingly backward processes that bring most of the revenue, ensuring that mainland chip foundries can continue to develop more advanced processes based on this.
And TSMC has taken such action, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it is not good news for our mainland chip foundries after all.
So what do you think of this? Comments, likes and reposts are welcome in the comment area.
