The "War Of Separatism" In The Global Semiconductor Industry Intensifies, And The US, Japan And South Korea Have Invested More Than 500 Billion US Dollars

At a time when chips are in short supply and wafer production capacity is insufficient, the importance of semiconductors around the world is getting higher and higher.

Recently, the United States, South Korea and Japan have intensively issued new policies to build the semiconductor industry chain. The United States plans to invest $52 billion, the radical South Korea directly throws out $450 billion, and Japan will expand the existing fund scale of 1.84 billion US dollars. The three countries have invested more than 500 billion US dollars. Together with the 145 billion euro (about 176.6 billion US dollars) in two or three years proposed by Europe last year, the total funds of these four regions have reached about 680.4 billion US dollars, and the number is still rising.

We can see the determination of all countries. Looking at China again, although the government has not announced the specific investment scale, from the industry perspective, according to Yunxiu capital statistics, there will be 413 equity investment cases in the domestic semiconductor industry in 2020, with an investment amount of more than 140 billion yuan, an increase of nearly four times over the same period of the previous year, which is the largest amount of investment in the primary market of China's semiconductor industry.

In the face of the current situation of science and technology game and global supply chain being blocked in recent years, it has become a national strategy to build local industrial chain, especially chip manufacturing. Wafer manufacturing plants spend a lot of money. With the support of the government, all localities offer olive branches to manufacturers with chip manufacturing capacity, hoping to attract core enterprises to settle in. At the same time, the major chip manufacturers are also actively expanding production, so the choice of origin has become an important game point. In the future, with the introduction of production capacity, the global semiconductor industry pattern may change.

Counterpoint research, a market research firm, analyzes the logic (non storage) IC chip industry and predicts that under the US chip manufacturing act, the US government will provide financial support for the construction of factories in the United States. As a result, the US chip capacity share is expected to increase from 18% in 2021 to 24% in 2027. By then, Taiwan's share of production capacity will fall to 40%.

At the same time, from the perspective of geographical distribution, counterpoint predicts that regional transfer of chip capacity will occur in 2027. TSMC is likely to invest more to reach the size of its Taiwan plant after the Arizona plant has achieved a capacity of 20000 units per month. In 2027, China's Taiwan and South Korea will account for 57% of the world's total chip capacity. With the intensification of geopolitical conflicts, the mainland of China is unable to purchase key production equipment, and will still be in a backward position in 3-5 years, accounting for only 6% of the global total production capacity.

"Anti globalization" of semiconductor industry chain

For a long time, the semiconductor industry chain has been highly globalized, and the R & D and cooperation of core enterprises are often "you have me, I have you". However, under the friction of trade environment, the supply chain has been hindered to increase, and many countries are still worried. The global semiconductor industry chain has begun to restructure.

An industry insider pointed out to the 21st century economic reporter that "anti globalization" is becoming more and more obvious in terms of the new regulations formulated by various regions. On the one hand, they all want to improve the semiconductor industry ecology locally, especially focusing on the manufacturing and production links occupied by TSMC; On the other hand, all countries hope to occupy the commanding height of technology and compete for the key technology of semiconductor in the next era. For China, the challenge is huge, but there are new opportunities. There is a huge consumer market in China.

On the policy level, the US Senate officially approved US $52 billion on Tuesday to vigorously promote the production and research of us semiconductor chips in the next five years, the report said. In terms of fund allocation, 39 billion US dollars are used for semiconductor production and R & D incentives, and another 10.5 billion dollars are used to promote the implementation of national semiconductor technology center, national advanced packaging manufacturing program and other R & D programs. In addition, it includes $1.5 billion in emergency funding to accelerate the development of open wireless access network (openran) supported by American operators.

Under the "call" of the United States, in addition to Intel and TSMC, recent news said that Samsung is considering the construction of ultra violet (EUV) OEM production line in Austin, Texas. This is the first time Samsung has set up an EUV production line overseas. It plans to start construction in the third quarter of this year and put into production in 2024. The new factory may introduce 5-nanometer technology.

What's more surprising is South Korea, where semiconductor accounts for the largest proportion in South Korea's exports. South Korea has spared no effort in this regard. According to South Korean media reports, South Korea has made a plan to spend about $450 billion in the next decade to build the world's largest chip manufacturing base. The South Korean government hopes to establish a "k-semiconductor belt" that extends tens of kilometers south of Seoul and brings together IC designers, manufacturers and suppliers. At the same time, the South Korean government said it would encourage the domestic semiconductor industry through tax cuts, lower interest rates, relax regulations and strengthen infrastructure, hoping that the chip manufacturers in South Korea would not be separated by global leaders.

Among them, Samsung and SK Hynix play an important role. In response to the government's new policies, Samsung plans to increase its capital expenditure by 30% in 2030 to reach US $151 billion. Sk Hynix, on the other hand, has committed $97 billion to expand its existing equipment and plans to spend $106 billion to build four new factories in Longren.

Europe, which is a technology leader in the field of subdivision, is also accelerating the construction of semiconductor ecology. Recently, the internal Committee of the European Union said that at present, 22 EU member states have jointly established a new semiconductor alliance to support European semiconductor R & D and reduce the EU's dependence on foreign suppliers. It is planned to increase the EU's share of global semiconductor production from 10% to 20% by 2030, The EU is also focusing on Intel, TSMC and Samsung to build factories in Europe.

Japan, which has a relatively complete industrial chain, will determine its fiscal year plan as early as next month. It is reported that the Japanese government will commit to expanding the existing 200 billion yen fund to support the domestic chip manufacturing industry and help boost the output of advanced semiconductors. Japan plans to account for 40% of the world's electric vehicles and next-generation power semiconductors by 2030.

In China, the trend of domestic substitution has been continuing. Integrated circuits and semiconductors have been written into the "14th five year plan" and become an important strategic direction. From the perspective of enterprises, TSMC, SMIC, Huahong and Yuexin are all actively expanding their production capacity. For example, recently, the first phase project of Wuxi base of Shanghai Huahong group has fully reached its production capacity, achieving the target of 40000 films per month ahead of schedule.

Production capacity is still short, and the pattern may change

At present, the shortage of chip supply continues. In addition to the epidemic situation in Taiwan and the lack of water and electricity, the supply chain problem is still serious. A number of Shenzhen chip design companies told the 21st century economic report that everyone needs to compete for chip production capacity, not only in wafer manufacturing, but also in packaging and testing. The supply is very tight, and the lead time of some chips has doubled.

In order to deal with the capacity problem, chip manufacturers are speeding up the construction of capacity, especially the mature capacity with a sharp increase in demand. According to omdia's statistics on the cooperation between global Fabs and Chinese semiconductor design companies, in 2019, the cooperation between Chinese semiconductor design companies and major domestic wafer manufacturers will become increasingly close. Domestic foundry companies have been able to provide a considerable proportion of foundry services for domestic semiconductor design enterprises, and they mainly focus on the cooperation in mature processes of 28nm and above.

Omdia said that both international first-line foundry companies and local leading manufacturers of wafer manufacturing are expanding their production with mature processes of more than 28nm. This shows that the demand for 14nm, 28nm and above will be strong in China for a long time to come. Moreover, with the development of semiconductor upstream equipment manufacturers for many years, mass production has been achieved in 40nm, and the independent localization of 28nm will be completed and realized by the end of 2021.

In terms of advanced processes, counterpoint predicts that the compound annual growth rate of the capacity of 10 nm and below logic (non storage) IC chips produced by global foundry factories and IDM manufacturers from 2021 to 2027 will be 21%, "over the years, global semiconductor manufacturers have been slow to expand production, which is the fundamental reason for the current IC chip tension. At present, all manufacturers are actively expanding their production capacity. It is estimated that by 2025, the global production capacity of 7-nanocrystalline full moon will increase by 160000 pieces, and that of 5-nanometer crystal round moon will increase by 100000 pieces, including the new 7-nanometer production capacity of Intel and the new factory capacity of TSMC and Samsung in the United States. "

Counterpoint further pointed out that, from the perspective of demand, with the rapid development of 5g replacement wave, data center processor upgrade and automatic driving (L4 / 5) in the next few years, digital transformation will give birth to more new applications. "It is estimated that the monthly demand of 16 / 14 nm and 7 / 6 nm wafer length will reach 250000-270000 pieces in 2021, and will increase to 300000-320000 pieces in 2025. We expect that the supply and demand of N5 and N7 wafers will be more balanced after the large-scale production of new plants in the next 2-3 years, but there will be no risk of oversupply. "

According to counter point's chip foundry service data, in the logic (non storage) IC chip industry, in 2021, Taiwan's 10 nm and below capacity (including the existing N10, N7, and future N3 / N2 since N5) accounted for 55% of the total global capacity, followed by South Korea (20%) and the United States (18%). Compared with the global capacity expansion in 2021-2025, the chip capacity growth in 2025-2027 will slow down, with Taiwan, South Korea and the United States accounting for 40%, 17% and 24% respectively.