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TAP TIMES -30- APRIL 2022
300mm fabs projected to cessing chips on large wafers come into
exceed 200 by 2026 play for device types characterized by
large die sizes and high volumes.
SAN DIEGO, Calif.— At the end of
2021, there were 153 semiconductor Examples
fabs processing 300mm wafers for the Examples of ICs with these characteristics
fabrication of ICs, including CMOS include DRAMs, flash memory, image sen-
image sensors, and non-IC products sors, complex logic and microcomponent
such as power discretes. ICs, PMICs, baseband processors, audio
CODECs, and display drivers.
Count increased by 14 in 2021
The 300mm wafer fab count increased by While large-size power transistors are still
14 in 2021, the most in one year since the small compared to the die sizes of these
same number opened in 2005. There are ICs, they ship in high volumes and are big
10 fabs scheduled to open in 2022, fol- enough to keep a 300mm fab loaded at a
lowed by another 13 in 2023 and 10 in cost-effective production level.
2024.
According to IC Insights, unit demand for
This puts the industry on pace to have power transistors in 2021 reached 43.5
more than 200 300mm fab lines in opera- billion for power MOSFETs and 2.2 billion
tion by 2026. These are projections made for IGBTs.
in Knometa’s new Global Wafer Capacity
2022 report Of the 10 300mm wafer fabs scheduled
to begin operations in 2022, two will be
More fab for power transistors focused on the production of non-IC prod-
An increasing number of 300mm fabs are ucts. One is a CR Micro fab in Chongqing,
being built to fabricate non-IC devices, China, and the other fab in Xiamen, Chi-
and power transistors in particular. na, owned by Silan Microelectronics.
The manufacturing cost benefits of pro- TSMC building 1/3d of new fabs
One-third of the new 300mm fabs opening
this year are being built by
TSMC. Responding to high de-
mand for its foundry services,
the company increased its
capital spending 74% in
2021 to $30 billion.
Much of that spending went
toward equipping the Phase 4
and Phase 5 fabs at its Fab 18
campus in Tainan.
TSMC is also finishing up a
second fab at it Fab 16 site in
Nanjing, China, to meet de-
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