Wafer capacity shortage

8-inch wafers are mainly used to produce MCUs, power management chips, MOSFETs, diodes, radio frequency chips, CMOS image sensors, MEMS sensors, fingerprint recognition chips, display driver chips, etc.

 

There are two reasons for the tight foundry capacity: First, Foundry factories such as TSMC and Samsung have been spending more resources on the expansion of new process 12-inch wafer fabs, and the expansion of the capacity of old processes such as 8-inch and 6-inch. Be conservative and even reduce production lines.

The second is the surge in demand. During the epidemic, the demand for pads, PCs, notebooks, game consoles, web cameras, and mouse, routers, keyboards, expansion slots, headsets and other computer peripheral products has skyrocketed, plus remote office, remote education, and live broadcast applications. Server market demand, grabbed 8-inch wafer production capacity.

 

Many people may have questions: Why can't 8-inch wafers be supplemented with 12-inch wafers?

 

There is a big difference between 8-inch and 12-inch wafers in process. The stability of the 12-inch wafer process is more difficult to control and the cost of building a factory is high. It is mainly developed to match the most advanced process (below 14nm). To produce the most cutting-edge CPU, GPU, FPGA and other products, and due to cost and special process constraints, a considerable number of devices still need to be produced on 8-inch wafers. The tight foundry capacity is expected to continue into at least the first half of 2021