The Tech Week that was... Oct 21~25

Welcome to the latest edition of my weekly newsletter bringing you all the global key semiconductor and technology news from last week in one easy read

 In the news this week..

TSMC said this week that it had notified the US government that one of its chips was reportedly found in a Huawei  product, in a possible breach of US export restrictions. TSMC was notified by TechInsights that it had discovered an Ascend 910B chip manufactured by TSMC while taking apart Huawei’s high end artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator and subsequently informed the US government.  TSMC is reported to have stopped shipments to the client in mid-October after it realised semiconductors fabricated for that entity had found their way into Huawei products.

Taiwan’s PSMC said this week it had terminated a deal with SBI Holdings to help build a chip manufacturing plant in Japan, as Powerchip found it unpractical to take the full responsibility of operating a plant it does not own for more than 10 years.  Under the non-binding agreement with SBI,  the Fab would belong to JSMC Holdings Inc, which is owned by SBI, and Powerchip would have no stake in it.

 Hemlock Semi is the latest company to be awarded direct funding under the US CHIPS Act.  This week the U.S. Department of Commerce and Hemlock Semiconductor (HSC) signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms to provide up to $325 million in proposed direct funding under the CHIPS Act to solidify U.S. leadership in semiconductor-grade polysilicon production. The proposed funding would support the construction of a new manufacturing facility on HSC’s existing campus in Hemlock, Michigan, which is dedicated to the production and purification of hyper-pure semiconductor-grade polysilicon.

 Wolfspeed has suspended plans build a silicon carbide wafer Fab in Ensdorf, Germany.  The planned US$3.25billion chip Fab was originally announced in Feb 2023 to manufacture chips for electric vehicles and other power applications.  However since then the EV automaker market has stagnated and Wolfspeed now believes it already has enough capacity for the foreseeable future.   This is the 2nd major Fab construction project to be postponed in Germany in the last few weeks after Intel put on hold it’s planned US$32.5billion Fab construction in Magdeburg, Germany.   

Texas Instruments (TI) has announced it has begun production of gallium nitride (GaN) based power semiconductor at it’s 200mm GaN Fab  in Aizu, Japan.  With the Japan Fab coming on line, TI will now quadruple it’s GaN capacity together with it’s Fab in Dallas Texas. 

In market research news…

 Yole is forecasting that global wafer equipment revenue will grow to US$165billion by 2029, from US$133billion in 2024, as global semiconductor revenue grows.  Global equipment market leaders are ASML, Applied Materials, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron Limited, and KLA.

Yole reported that advanced packaging revenue grew 5% in Q2 to US$10.9billion and 3rd revenue is expected to grow 15.5% to US$12.6billion.  Advanced packaging CapEx of the top players in 2024 is expected to be more than US$10 billion.

Trendforce is forecasting that mature Fab capacity will grow 6% in 2025 with Chinese foundries leading the expansion.  Trendforce nodes that whilst advanced node Fabs are seeing full utilisation in 2024, mature Fabs defined as. 28nm and above are only seeing a moderate recovery with utilisation rates expected to be 75% in 2025.   Major mature node capacity expansion plans for 2025 include TSMC’s JASM fab in Kumamoto, Japan, as well as SMIC’s fabs in Lingang (Shanghai), Beijing, HuaHong Group’s Fab9 and Fab10, and Nexchip’s N1A3. 

Global shipments of silicon wafers are projected to decline 2% in 2024 to 12,174 million square inches (MSI) before growing 10% in 2025 to reach 13,328 MSI as wafer demand continues to recover from the downcycle, SEMI reported this week.  Strong silicon wafer shipment growth is expected to continue through 2027 to meet increasing demand for AI and advanced processing.

Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is expected to see its production value grow by 16.5% next year to exceed US$192billion for the first time, fuelled by sustained demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices according to Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute.

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