In the second half of the year, we entered the smart phone chip stocking season. This year, not only Apple's iPhone used the TSMC 7nm process to mass produce the A12 application processor, but also the mobile phone chips of Qualcomm and MediaTek introduced 12╱10nm into mass production.
In addition, the artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) market is growing rapidly, and the Internet of Things and automotive electronics applications are innovating. It also drives 16╱14nm and more advanced process chips to complete the design and finalization, and will enter mass production in the second half of the year.
The use of advanced process chip volume, but the relative application of test capacity is lacking news. In fact, including ASE, KYEC, Silicon Valley, Xinyi, Taixing Branch and other test operators continue to increase capital expenditure this year, but the main test equipment Suppliers such as Advantest, Teradyne, etc., because the high-end test machine supporting advanced process is tight due to the supply of some components, resulting in continuous delivery of test equipment, high-end test machine delivery in the first half of the year 4 months, the second half has been extended to 6 months.
The delivery period of high-end test equipment has been extended to 6 months, which means that the newly released purchase orders of the test factory are difficult to get the equipment before the end of the year. It takes 3-6 months for the equipment to be installed and mass-produced. In the next year, high-end test capacity will be in short supply.
Due to the huge high-end test capacity possessed by TSMC, ASE, and KYEC, it has been robbed by Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Hess. The production capacity is still in short supply, and relevant manufacturers have sought new ones. Test capacity support, the rest of the test plants have received a large number of urgent orders or short orders recently, capacity utilization rate rose sharply in July, the third quarter will be fully loaded full operation.
Testers said that in the past, when the test capacity was in short supply, the chip test would reduce the test time, but in the second half of the year, the new chips were all produced in advanced processes. In order to ensure the computing efficiency and chip yield, the test time was not reduced. For example, 12nm mobile phone The test time of the chip is nearly 50% longer than that of the 16nm. As for the 7nm chip test time, it is also 1 times faster than the 10nm. In this case, the high-end test capacity will be in short supply in the second half of the year, and the hourly test price increase rate will increase greatly. .