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TAP TIMES -42- MARCH 2022
8-inch wafer capacity remains
tight, but easing is likely
TAIPEI, Taiwan — From 2020 to 2025,
the compound annual growth rate
(CAGR) of 12-inch (300mm) equivalent
wafer capacity at the world’s top ten
foundries will be approximately 10%.
Focus on capacity expansion
The majority of these companies are focus-
ing on 12-inch capacity expansion, which
will see a CAGR of approximately 13.2%,
according to TrendForce’s research. Photo: Shin Etsu Handotai
duction, alleviating the shortage of 8-inch
For 8-inch (200mm) wafers, due to factors production capacity.
such as difficult-to-obtain equipment and
whether capacity expansion is cost-effec- At present, mainstream products produced
tive, most fabs can only expand production using 8-inch wafers include large-sized
slightly by means of capacity optimization, panel Driver IC, CIS, MCU, PMIC, Power
equating to a CAGR of only 3.3%. Discrete (including MOSFET, IGBT), Finger-
print, Touch IC, and Audio Codec.
The products primarily derived from 8-inch
wafers, PMIC and Power Discretes, are Gradual migration
driven by demand for electric vehicles, 5G Among them, there are plans to gradually
smartphones, and servers. migrate Audio Codec and some more se-
verely back-ordered PMICs to the 12-inch
Serious shortage process.
Stocking momentum has not fallen off, re-
sulting in a serious shortage of 8-inch wafer For PMICs, other than certain PMICs used in
production capacity that has festered since Apple iPhones already manufactured at 12-
2H19. inch 55nm, most mainstream PMIC process-
es are still at 8-inch 0.18-0.11μm.
Therefore, to mitigate competition for
8-inch capacity, a trend of shifting certain Burdened with the long-term supply short-
products to 12-inch production has gradu- age, IC design companies including Medi-
ally emerged. atek, Qualcomm, and Richtek have succes-
sively planned to transfer some PMICs to
However, if shortages in overall 8-inch ca- 12-inch 90/55nm production.
pacity are to be effectively alleviated, how-
ever, it is still necessary to wait for a large Process conversion
number of mainstream products to migrate However, since product process conversion
to 12-inch production. requires time-consuming development and
verification and total current production ca-
The timeframe for this migration is estimat- pacity of the 90/55nm BCD process is lim-
ed to be close to 2H23 into 2024. Power ited, short term relief to 8-inch production
management ICs and Audio Codecs have capacity remains small.
been gradually transferred to 12-inch pro- next page
