1. The gap between supply and demand for wafers has expanded, and the performance of IC packaging and testing companies has become a major pressure.
In the era of high tide of mobile electronics products, micro-net news gathered that the companies of packaging and testing have also emerged. Due to the pressure of rapid update of the electronic product market, the quality of the packaging and testing as well as the output requirements are also increasing.
According to the prediction of the Tiepi Industrial Research Institute of TrendForce, the top 10 packaging and foundries in the first half of 2018 will have an estimated revenue of 11.12 billion US dollars, an increase of 10.5% year-on-year, which is 16.4% lower than the same period of last year.
Changjiang Electronics, Tianshui Huatian, Tongfu Microelectronics accounted for a new high
Among them, Changjiang Electronics Technology, Tianshui Huatian, and Tongfu Microelectronics all had double-digit growth. The three companies accounted for 26.9% of the top ten packaging and foundry total revenues, setting a record high.
In terms of rankings of the world's top ten IC IC manufacturers, there was no change in rankings in the first half of the year. In order to control Sun Moonlight’s investment in its subsidiaries, ARKEL, Jiangsu Changdian, and Sun Moonlight invested in its silicon products, Licheng, Tianshui Huatian, Tongfu Microelectronics, Lianhe, Jingyuandian and Nanmao.
This ranking has not changed much compared with 2017, of which only the joint test rose by one, ranking eighth, and Jingyuan Electric falling one place, ranking ninth.
In terms of revenue growth rate, Changjiang Electronics Technology, Tianshui Huatian and Tongfu Microelectronics have increased their revenues by 18.7%, 40.9%, and 17.2% respectively in the first half of the year, both of which have achieved double-digit growth. .
Topo Industrial Research Institute pointed out that in the first half of the year, due to the slowdown in high-end smartphone growth and wafer price increase, except for the annual growth rate of the packaging and foundry industry, the global IC packaging and testing industry was also affected, with an estimated output value of 251.5. Billion US dollars, an increase of 1.4% year-on-year, a significant decline from 9.1% in the same period last year.
Domestic IC packaging and testing into the fast lane of development
With the rapid rise of emerging industries such as Internet of things, big data, and intelligent terminals, China's integrated circuit packaging and testing industry has begun to move from the previous low-end packaging field to high-end advanced packaging technologies. The advanced packaging market for R&D and layout has also become a Long Power, Hua Tian and Tong Fu Microelectronics and other packaging companies to test the important driving force for growth in revenue.
Previously, Tiebo Industrial Research Institute stated that due to the global industry consolidation and increased competition, China's IC packaging and testing manufacturers will focus on developing high-end Resident Evil packaging technology and market share from overseas acquisitions, and instead focus on developing advanced technologies such as Fan-Out and SiP. Packaging technology.
According to the capacity planning of Chinese fabs, it is estimated that the monthly production capacity of Chinese 12-inch wafers by the end of 2018 will actually increase by approximately 162,000 units. By then, the total monthly production capacity in China will be 1.8 times the original capacity of 200,000 units. These production capacities will increase further. Become an important driving force for China's packaging and testing industry to grow in 2018.
The main reasons for the growth of IC packaging and testing industry in China are:
In 2018, China's semiconductor domestic demand market, dominated by smart phones and other communications, is expected to grow by 6.5% annually.
Domestic packaging and testing companies continued to expand their production capacity, and local companies such as Jiangsu Changdian and Nantong Huada Microelectronics were supported by the government through semiconductor funds, and their expansion of production was relatively positive for foreign-funded enterprises.
Domestic domestic packaging and testing industry acquires technology through mergers and acquisitions. For example, Jiangsu Changdian acquires STATS ChipPAC, Nantong Huada Microelectronics acquires AMD Penang Plant and Suzhou Plant, etc., becoming China IC packaging and testing industry growth. One of kinetic energy.
TPI also pointed out that although the market is generally optimistic about such topics as automotive, 5G, and artificial intelligence (AI), the technology is still in the introduction stage, which has limited the output value of the industry in the field of sealing and measurement, and is at a disadvantage in the industrial value chain. In the segment, faced with the slowdown in the growth of smartphones, silicon wafer price increases led to higher costs. Most companies' gross margin performance in the first quarter was not as high as the same period last year.
Looking ahead, Tiebo Industrial Research Institute believes that although the second half of the year entered the traditional sales season, wafer manufacturing costs will continue to increase as the wafer supply and demand gap widens. The pressure on gross margins for the packaging and testing industry may continue until the end of the year. / Fan Rong)
2. The 'strongman era' ended. Can Taiwan Semiconductors re-create a TSMC?
For Taiwan and even the global semiconductor industry, Zhang Zhongmou is a strong name. During his 30-year tenure at TSMC, the company grew from a company that was unknown and not favored to the world's top foundry giant.
In fiscal year 2017, TSMC realized revenue of 33 billion U.S. dollars (about 208.7 billion yuan), net profit of nearly 80 billion yuan, and its market value of up to 220 billion U.S. dollars, surpassing Intel to become the world's largest semiconductor company. 'Foundry' The success of the model gave Zhang Zhongmou a reputation as a “semiconductor godfather”.
To some extent, TSMC's founding of TSMC not only created its own industry (semiconductor manufacturing industry), but also created the customer's industry (semiconductor design industry). It is precisely because the industrial division of work has gradually become a climate, fabless IC design company (fabless) continue to emerge, thus creating a number of well-known semiconductor design companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia, MediaTek, Broadcom and others.
Nvidia founder and CEO Huang Renxun once publicly expressed his gratitude to Zhang Zhongmou. 'If TSMC is not owned, he is only the owner of a small company'.
Some people say that the 1970s was the golden age of the semiconductor industry in the United States. The 1980s was the era when Japanese semiconductors came to a peak. The 1990s was the era of the rise of the Korean semi-conductive industry. Then, in the 00s, it was supported by fabs. The era of sudden emergence of the semiconductor industry.
In the era of 'strong man' represented by Zhang Zhongmou, Taiwan’s semiconductor talents came out in large numbers, including Cai Mingjie, founder of MediaTek, Zhang Qingyu, former world’s leading chairman, Wang Guoyu, chairman of Genesis Technology, and Yang Dingyuan, founder of Winbond Electronics. Entered the fast lane. From IC Design Co., Ltd., MediaTek, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., to IC Packaging & Measurement Co., Ltd., Riyueguang formed the strongest lineup.
Of the thousands of listed companies in Taiwan, nearly half of the manufacturers are engaged in products related to the electronics industry. They are literally 'electronic treasure islands'. These electronic companies can be broadly divided into two categories. One is upstream. Semiconductor companies, including materials, equipment, design, manufacturing and packaging and testing; there is a computer and mobile phone factory and supporting components company.
However, with the retirement of Zhang Zhongmou, the industry expressed its own concerns about the prospects of Taiwan's semiconductors. Even Zhang Zhongmou himself admitted that the global semiconductor investment peak has passed. 'The rapid growth of semiconductors has passed, from 1952 to 2000. For a period of 48 years, the average compound annual growth rate is 16% per year, which is a very high figure. After 2000, about 4% to 5% will remain. In the next 10 years, I think it will be 4% to 5%.'
In such an environment, it will test the internal strength of the enterprise.
The semi-conductor industry can simulate running, and each contestant is actually doing similar actions. It is only suitable for long-distance running. Some people are suitable for sprinting. The challenges faced by Taiwanese companies come from the outside, but also from the inside. At the level, there is also a technical level. Whether or not the next decade will be in Taiwan, once again, semiconductor giants such as TSMC have responded. It is obviously very difficult to answer.
From the perspective of external challenges, Lin Jianhong, research manager of Jibang Tuobei Industrial Research Institute, believes that Taiwan’s share of the manufacturing market at mature process nodes will gradually decline. Internal challenges will come from land, energy, education policies, and salary levels will reduce manufacturing. The strength of packaging and testing and reinvestment. 'In the slowing down of the growth of PCs and smart phones, the market scale has driven down the driving force of semiconductor manufacturing industry. In the AI, 5G, self-driving and other issues, there will be a new market size, such as It will be the key to the continued growth of Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing industry.
More importantly, the big bang of technology is rewriting the pattern of the semiconductor industry. The tech giants at the top of the mountain feel more intense than ever before. Take Qualcomm as an example. Although chip giants such as Intel have been defeated in the mobile era to become the market The rookie, but before artificial intelligence, 5G is immature, the criticism of Wall Street seems to be incomprehensible. Although Broadcom's acquisition offer failed to take place, it can be seen that even the top semiconductor companies cannot guarantee themselves. Will it become a victim of change?
The new market demand is also stimulating the emergence of new companies. To achieve economies of scale and reduce costs, leading companies will continue to carry out international mergers and acquisitions for the purpose of strategic integration. At the same time, as the industry enters the post-Moore era, companies will accelerate the layout. In the emerging markets, the competitive landscape in the subdivided areas will accelerate reshaping, and mergers and acquisitions around the Internet of Things, automotive electronics, data centers, and artificial intelligence will become increasingly active.
For Taiwan, China, taking IC design as an example, although it is the second largest IC design area in the world, second only to the United States, the gap is still very large, and the wave of mergers and acquisitions is not very popular.
This may have something to do with the Taiwanese business owner's mentality of “being a chicken head, not a cow.” Taiwan’s semiconductor industry used to have strong advantages, but it did not seize the opportunity to reorganize it. Many companies today are very small. Inadequate layout, can only compete in the market segment.
Lin Jianhong believes that the semiconductor industry is a highly-scale economic industry. The foundry industry can thrive and Taiwan’s frustration in the memory industry is affected by economies of scale. Taiwan is limited by the limited resources in the overall development of semiconductors and must have limited resources. Bet on specific projects, resulting in a relatively lack of investment in key IP/EDA/material/equipment areas, becoming a weak link in Taiwan's semiconductor development.
3. China's sealing and testing plants have grown significantly. Taiwanese factories are actively fighting against each other;
Faced with the expansion of mainland forces, Japan, Japan, Beijing, Yuandian, Silicon and other Taiwanese packaging and testing plants actively responded. In response to the strong demand for heterogeneous chip integration, Sun Moonlight accelerated the system-level packaging and testing layout; KYEC is upgrading its own wafer testing machine. Create a niche; Silicon also accelerates consolidation, and raises power and power chip production capacity, avoiding competition with counterparties.
The mainland officials actively supported the semiconductor industry, simultaneously boosting the local wafer manufacturing process and the demand for post-segment packaging and testing, and drove the local major packaging and testing plants to grow significantly. However, the world’s leading semiconductor packaging and testing leader, Riyueguang, believes that the cross-strait packaging and testing plants will continue to In the stage of competition and integration, the mainland's semiconductor industry still has to rely on the strength of Taiwan's sealing and testing plants.
For example, Ziguang Group recently acquired shares in Nanmao and silicon products. In the future, it may also form large-scale memory alliances with Licheng and Huadong, and Sunlight and Moonlight will not rule out joining the cooperation.
In the face of mainland packaging and testing plants, the company has expanded its production capacity through consolidation and expansion, launched price wars in middle and low-end products, and upgraded its high-end packaging and testing capabilities through integration, upgrading its high-end packaging and testing capabilities, and actively accelerating systems through heterogeneous chip integration. Level test layout.
Sun Moonlight stated that after the integration of silicon products, the two parties will increase their competitive advantage in high-level packaging and testing. Sun Moonlight has formed an alliance with foreign manufacturers and established the Sun Moon Electronics Co., Ltd. with Japanese TDK to produce ICs through TDK-licensed technology. The use of embedded substrates will help grab more system-level packaging opportunities and make Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain more complete.
KYEC earlier announced the construction of the Miaoli Copper and Antimony Plant. It will also expand the production capacity of the mainland and increase the proportion of self-developed testing machines. We hope to see the next wave of 5G mobile communications (5G), artificial intelligence (AI), smart cars and objects. Networking, driving high-speed computing chips, Internet of Things, micro-electromechanical, mobile communications, e-sports and automotive electronics and other related chip product testing services, to seize the initiative.
Silicon is accelerating the consolidation, including mergers and acquisitions Cheng Yuan and Taixing Branch, expand customer base and increase in RF components, power semiconductors and power management chips and other packaging testing, creating a niche market. Economic Daily 4. Foreign capital: 5 major business opportunities will drive TSMC's 7-nanometer city to increase by 277% next year;
Foundry brother UMC hit a daily limit yesterday (13th) to boost semiconductor group morale. Deutsche, Lyon, Credit Suisse Securities, Yuanta Investment Co., etc. fully aimed at the largest weighted stocks of TSMC, Germany and dissected TSMC's key 7nm process. Five major business opportunities broke out, and eight major customer orders emerged. This stimulated a 77% increase in the revenue of 7-nanometer manufacturing operations next year.
UMC, which stimulated the wave of foundry work for this wave, was first put forward by Lü Jiabiao, chief analyst of UBS Securities in Asia Pacific. His latest view is that the overall semiconductor industry has undergone tremendous changes in recent years, not only has the competitive landscape changed, but also smart machines. Use, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) has mushroomed, wafer foundry capacity is tight, bargaining power has increased, industrial structure has changed, and it cannot be seen only by short-term price increases.
Interestingly, the original industry was led by the leader to drive the rest of the stocks. This time it was the other way round. UMC led TSMC to make a comeback and the world advanced so as to provide an alternative legal perspective. Foreign investors bought over 7,264 TSMCs yesterday. Ranked third in the rankings, also stopped selling 3 consecutive trading days to sell King Chao King.
UMC’s number of over 350,000 bursts yesterday to a daily limit of 18.5 yuan; TSMC gained 1.31% to close at 232 yuan.
Zhou Lizhong, semiconductor analyst at Deutsche Securities, pointed out that five major business opportunities have driven TSMC’s 7-nanometer market to expand, including: smart phone chips (Apple, Qualcomm, Hass), network chips (Broadcom, MediaTek), gaming GPUs (Nvidia) , AMD), programmable logic elements FPGA (Xilinx), cryptocurrency ASIC, etc.
With eight major customers blessing, Deutsche estimates that TSMC’s 7-nanometer process revenue will increase nearly threefold next year, taking up less than 10% of this year’s total revenue, which will increase to 29%. Meanwhile, TSMC’s overall wafer The proportion of revenue in the foundry industry will also increase from 56% to 60%.
Yuan Jiachao, Director of Taiwan Research at Zhangjiabang, said that with the inventory days of global IC design companies, the status of the semiconductor industry has shown signs of improvement, and companies are gradually entering the peak season to meet strong terminal demand. The overall industry continues to grow this year. , Now look at the return of international funds.
Hou Mingxiao, a Semiconductor Industry Analyst at CLSA, pointed out that based on recent discussions with Asian corporate legal clients, customers were found to have doubts about cryptocurrencies. However, this is because Bitcoin mining ASICs, the second and third quarter are switching from 16 nm to 7 Nano fabrication process, TSMC long-term camp sports can still look good, is the first choice for buying semiconductor groups, speculated that the reasonable stock valuation 285 yuan.
Not only Lyon, TSMC is even one of Credit Suisse Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) most concerned about the stock list, Credit Suisse gave a reasonable price of 270 yuan speculated, and optimistic about the contribution of TSMC to capture the Qualcomm Xiaolong 400 Series chip, estimated this year camp Close to 10% growth. Business Times
5. Reported that the global semiconductor equipment spending will be broken for three consecutive years;
According to the report of the International Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI), it is expected that global semiconductor equipment expenditure will record high for three consecutive years, and this year and next year will have annual growth rates of 14% and 9% respectively. If, as predicted, the global semiconductor equipment spending will be For four consecutive years, it was the first time since the mid-1990s.
According to the report, China and South Korea led the uptrend, among which Korea SK Hynix increased equipment expenses, but Samsung will reduce related investment in Korea. In China, equipment spending will increase by 65% and 57% year-on-year, respectively, in the next two years. In this year and next year, 58% and 56% of spending will be absorbed by foreign investors, including Intel, SK Hynix, TSMC, Samsung and GLOBALFOUNDRIES.
Japan’s related equipment spending will also increase by 60% this year, mainly from Toshiba, Sony, Renesas and Micron. SEMI
6.8 Silicon wafers brewing prices UMC, the world's most advanced share price upside down;
As the legal entity reported that full capacity of 8 wafers will be used, it will increase the offer price for OEMs. UMC (2303) and the world’s advanced (5347) will surge, UMC will go higher, and the daily limit will be attacked. The volume will be enlarged to 300,000 in a single move. Above, the world’s advanced intraday reached HK$72.7 once, challenging the previous wave high, which rose by 8.18%.
Corporate circle pointed out that due to the 8-inch wafer foundry capacity, benefit from MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors), the increasing demand for power management ICs and automotive chips, plus the expansion of global wafer foundries With 12% of advanced processes, 8′′ equipment is expensive, not in line with investment efficiency, and global wafer foundries do not plan to significantly expand production. As overall demand continues to increase, the supply and demand situation will become even tighter, and the end of the second quarter will brewing. Adjust the quote.
In addition, there will be a large number of orders for power management and vehicle use by foreign IDM manufacturers, and this glory will continue all the way to 2019, and the industry expects that the trend of IDM manufacturers' release of the future will only increase and will not decrease, mainly due to foreign companies. The product mix optimization will continue to release mid-level gross profit orders to professional foundries for production. The company concentrates its resources on vehicle-use, industrial control and other niche-based product development, lowers production costs and expenses, and UMC and the world's advanced companies continue to benefit from this trend. , Operation is booming in the second half of the year. Economic Daily
7.Improve the efficiency of the chip. Apply Cobalt metal to introduce the 7nm process.
With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) generations, the demand for high-efficiency computing chips will continue to grow. However, the current tungsten and copper materials for semiconductors have already faced physical limitations. The world’s largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer announced that it has introduced cobalt metal as a 7-nanometer process. Conductive material, improve chip performance.
With the advent of artificial intelligence and the era of big data, chips must continue to scale up and improve performance. How to produce more efficient, less power-efficient, smaller-area, low-cost chips below the 10-nanometer process becomes the main current semiconductor process. Topics.
According to the explanation of applied materials, in the PC era, the crystal structure of the chip is mainly planar, rare integrated materials are used, and microlithography is used for chip micro-reduction, so that the performance of the chip can be improved and power consumption can be reduced, but with the As the era progressed to mobile communications, the customer began to self-align the pattern paintings, self-aligned quadruple pattern paintings, and continued the use of extreme ultraviolet light (EUV) to continue to shrink, chip performance gains began to slow down, and cost efficiency also decreased.
With the pace of Moore's Law, the state-of-the-art semiconductor process has now reached the 7-nanometer level. However, as the chips continue to shrink, some conductive materials such as tungsten and copper have not been able to successfully shrink under the 10-nanometer process. In nature, the process of transistor contact and local terminal metal wire has approached the physical limit, and the original tungsten and copper can no longer be imported into the interface. This has also become a bottleneck for the performance of fin transistors (FinFET).
Applied materials point out that cobalt metal can eliminate this bottleneck, and the technology that uses cobalt metal as a conductor turns the corner and Moore's Law continues to move downwards. Currently, cobalt has been verified to be suitable for mass production, and cobalt appears to be low at a narrow pitch. Resistive characteristics effectively improve power consumption, allowing material engineering to continue to shrink, and the highly optimized deposition, tempering, and planarization processes provided by the application materials can reduce costs and improve yield.
In fact, TSMC has a close cooperation relationship with TSMC. At present, almost all key equipment and materials of TSMC's advanced manufacturing processes are supplied by applied materials. As TSMC's manufacturing processes continue to shrink, application materials will continue to benefit. Business Times