The current chip foundry is showing a " oligopoly ". How big changes will Samsung be tight-knit and Intel 's "unblocking" will Intel bring to this situation?
The first wave of pre-sales in Double Eleven has passed. Have you become the depositor?
. Earlier, some chip foundries had already started the "crazy shopping" mode, and have expanded the foundry factories and acquired companies by , such as TSMC, which "sits firmly in the top spot in the market" .
From the United States to Germany and then to Japan, TSMC "crazy" to expand overseas
In terms of expansion speed, TSMC can be said to be the first to .
At the beginning of this year, there was news that TSMC President Wei Zhejia wrote a letter to customers, mentioning that the company's wafer factory "has capacity utilization rate exceeded 100% in the past 12 months", but the supply is still in short supply. It also mentioned a long-term plan for to invest 100 billion US dollars in 3 years” . After
, TSMC also official certification. company is expected to invest US$100 billion in the next three years to increase production capacity to support the manufacturing and research and development of leading technologies.
Almost from here, we have seen TSMC more and more frequent expansion of .
For example, expanding the Nanjing factory, investing in and building a factory in Phoenix City, Arizona, USA, etc., the capital investment has reached nearly US$15 billion.
At the same time, from the beginning of the year to the present, Japan and Europe have often had scandals with TSMC for "building factories".
For example, in Japan, there were rumors in February this year that TSMC plans to spend US$178 million to open a subsidiary in Japan. Immediately afterwards, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan announced that it would invest 37 billion yen to support TSMC in setting up a chip R&D center in Japan, and the Japanese government would pay half of the funds. Japan Asahi Kasei , IBIDEN, University of Tokyo and others would have related cooperation with TSMC.
Not long ago, the latest updates showed that under the leadership of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, TSMC will cooperate with Sony in in Japan to build a front-end engineering factory, with the total investment of reaching 1 trillion yen.
I have to say that Japan spared no effort in the matter of "introducing TSMC to build a factory" .
And recently, there has been new progress in TSMC's overseas factory building, which also confirms some previous rumors.
TSMC confirmed that it will invest in in Japan to build a special process wafer factory, provides 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process production capacity. It is estimated that the factory will start construction in in 2022 and start mass production in 2024.
It is worth noting that this investment is not included in TSMC's "3-year USD 100 billion".
As for Europe, at the annual shareholders' meeting in July this year, TSMC Chairman Liu Deyin made it clear that the company is in the initial stage of evaluating whether opening a wafer fab in Germany is feasible.
Why is this year?
From the dynamics in the past few years, we can see that TSMC's expansion has not been as frequent as this year. At this time, we were a little curious, why this year? One reason for
is obvious - is missing core.
This is already a well-known problem worldwide, and TSMC, as the world's largest chip foundry, has been on the front line in the perception of the shortage of production capacity and urgent demand behind chip shortage.
Previously, Wei Zhejia said that TSMC is ushering in the opportunity of structural growth of semiconductors in , and advanced technology is needed for applications related to high-performance computing. This is a long-term demand for .
At the same time, in the short term, Wei Zhejia also pointed out that as downstream manufacturers seek supply security, is rushing to stock, has caused a short-term imbalance in the supply chain . "regardless of whether the short-term imbalance will continue, due to strong demand, our annual production capacity is tight this year and will continue until 2022."
. As early as the beginning of this year, there was news from the industry chain that TSMC's production capacity has long been fully loaded with until the end of the year. As for the production capacity orders in the first half of 2022, it also encountered the grand occasion of killing in seconds. Even in order to avoid over-ordering by customers, TSMC has changed its strategy and allocated production capacity based on customers' past orders and estimates of terminal market demand.
Considering the urgent need for current supply chain production capacity and the long-term needs of G and high-performance computing in the future, "expansion" has become necessary. At the same time, given the global characteristics of the semiconductor supply chain, it is reasonable to expand factories in countries such as Japan that occupy an important link in the industrial chain.
However, from another perspective, TSMC's expansion may also feel a little "negative" in .
knows that there are only 3 chip manufacturers in the industry that have advanced process technology, and are TSMC, Samsung and Intel. Among them, Intel has been left behind by TSMC and Samsung in terms of advanced process technology. Although Samsung has made parallel with TSMC, it is far behind TSMC on the market.
Logically speaking, TSMC does not need to be too nervous in this context. But the problem arises, Samsung and Intel have started to move, and it is not a small move.
Perhaps, in the next 4 years, TSMC will usher in a big test of .
Who is competing with TSMC, ushering in uncertain factors?
Use "Who competes with" to describe the current TSMC, and no one should object.
According to the global wafer foundry rankings for the second quarter of 2021 released by research institution TrendForce, TSMC and Samsung ranked first and second, with the former accounting for 52.9% and the latter accounting for 17.3%.
However, Samsung is not willing to accept it.
Previously, due to the IDM mode, Samsung's investment in equipment and resources always took priority over its own CPU, memory chips, etc., and the resources that can be allocated to the foundry part are limited. At the same time, competitive relationships and other factors also make it worry about advanced process OEM, such as losing Apple OEM due to intellectual property disputes.
So in 2017, Samsung independentized its wafer foundry business and established a Samsung wafer foundry factory, which also made its jump to the second largest share in the world in 2018.
Nowadays, a few years have passed, and Samsung is still ranked second, and the gap with TSMC is getting bigger and bigger.
Since the market cannot keep up for the time being, we will continue to compete in advanced processes.
, just at the wafer foundry forum held in October this year, Samsung announced the blueprint for advanced process technology - . The new 3nm GAA process was launched in the first half of 2022. In 025, MBCFET (multi-bridge-channel field effect tube) evolved based on the new GAA nanosheet structure allows nm process to be mass-produced.
At the same time, there is also "restless" 's former "king" Intel.
As we all know, Intel was the first to enter the 14nm era, but who would have thought that since then, Intel has left people with only the tags and impressions of "squeezing toothpaste" .
Until the end of last year, Intel still had this label, and the 7nm process, which is regarded as a "breakthrough", has been repeatedly delayed. But since the beginning of this year, Intel began to "seek change" of , and upgraded the original IDM mode to .0.
Among them, the biggest change is that the comprehensive opens the OEM business, and plans to invest funds to expand and build new factories.
. Just recently, Intel CEO Kissinger even said that he hopes to win back Apple's computer chip business, and many other businesses. The "other businesses" here must include chip foundry business. Obviously, Intel is going to "snatch food from the tiger's mouth" from TSMC.
As for advanced processes, Intel has also announced its development path after rename: 0nm is followed by Intel 7, followed by Intel 4, Intel 3, Intel 20A, Intel 18A, and also set a flag: regained the throne in 2025, and regained its leading process position.
Not to mention whether Samsung and Intel can eventually take over the "behemoth" of TSMC. What is certain is that will be a key node in the top competition in the foundry market in 2025.
What we know now is, in addition to Samsung and Intel focusing on 2025 in their own technology roadmap, including TSMC, also stated that As of 2025, the company will be in the leading position in the density and energy efficiency of 2nm technology. and confidently said: "Don't comment on the competitor's technical blueprint, but I believe TSMC will continue to have the most competitive technology and even 2nm."
Obviously, 2025 will be a lively year for . At that time, was the situation still the only one in TSMC, or was it evenly matched with Samsung, or was it a three-legged TSMC, Samsung and Intel? There is no absolute conclusion yet.
