18-inch wafers become mainstream in 2014~2015

Following INTEL's announcement that it will step down to US$4.1 billion and invest in ASML, the Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer, it will accelerate the development of advanced process technologies such as 18-inch wafers and EUV lithography, and eat a 15% stake in ASML. TSMC has also expressed , will invest 1.114 billion euros (about 1.4 billion US dollars) to follow up the ASML investment case, Samsung, which has been plagued by Apple lawsuits recently, announced on the 27th that it will pay a total of 779 million euros (equivalent to 975 million U.S. dollars) to follow up. ASML's Customer Co-Investment Program; the three major semiconductor giants officially positioned for the 18-inch wafer battle.

In this regard, Nomura Securities issued the latest report that 18-inch wafers will be the most economical specification process during 2014-2015, and will also be the capital expenditure that fabs must make to minimize costs.

The report pointed out that if you use a current 28-nm, 12-inch wafer fab, the cost will cost as much as 5 billion US dollars, and then consider the cost of tools/equipment including process conversion to spend 1.3 times more, and convert 12-inch wafers into 18-inch wafers. Wafers are estimated to be cost-effective, with a cost-saving factor of 10-20%, and an 18-inch wafer fab with a capacity of 50,000 wafers per month (a production process of 14 nm) will cost approximately. Need 15 billion US dollars; and such a high price, only Intel, Samsung, TSMC and other giants are able to pay, and is currently laying the 12-inch plant capacity for the 28/20 nanometer production of UMC, GlobalFoundries (GlobalFoundries), etc. , it may be the next wave of cut into the 18-inch wafer contestants.

The report analyzes that the current Fab-lite model will be a long-term trend (that is, IDM will reduce the number of wafers released by its own fabs for external release), and foundry fabs will also benefit from this. The semiconductor giants including Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba, and Renesas have all slowed down their deployment of advanced process capabilities, especially those below 40nm. The step-by-step process shows that in the future, fabs will be faced with high capital expenditure pressure, but they can indeed benefit from the emerging demand. Logical ICs and memory products will be the focus of Moore's Law, but memory ICs may not be the area that the fabs specialize in, mainly because price fluctuations are too great.

The report believes that the areas where fabs can focus on in the future will include logic ICs that require multiple designs, multiple applications, and shipments, as well as power management/analog ICs (because IDM's interest in the expansion of advanced process capacity is lacking. lack).