Chipmakers were already on a spending spree. South Korea announced a push worth $450-billion over ten years, the United States is pushing legislation worth $52 billion, and the EU could plow up to $160-billion into its semiconductor sector. The chip shortage is happening simultaneously with national and regional efforts to boost advanced logic chip manufacturing. In comparison, spending to equip 300-mm fabs is expected to hit $78-billion in 2021. But then spending will drop back to $4 billion in 2022.
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Spending on equipment for these fabs is set to rise to $4.6 billion in 2021 after crossing the $3-billion mark in 2020 for the first time in years, SEMI says. Long-term trend to the end of 2024 is for a 17 percent increase in capacity for 200-mm facilities. More than 40 companies will increase capacity by more than 750,000 wafers-per-month from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2022. but companies are investing in equipping the old ones. According to the chip manufacturing equipment industry association SEMI, the number of 200-mm fabs will go from 212 in 2020 to 222 in 2022, about half the expected increase of the more profitable 300-mm fabs. What's more there are already many legacy-node plants in China that are not operating efficiently right now, but “at some point, they will," he says, further reducing the incentive to build new fabs. “The return on investment just isn't there," says Morales.
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To reduce cost, the industry began moving to 300-mm wafers in 2000, but much of the old 200-mm infrastructure continued and even expanded.ĭespite the auto industry's desperation, there's no great rush to build new 200-mm fabs. Today these old nodes are typically used on 200-mm wafers of silicon.
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This chip manufacturing technology was last cutting edge 15 years ago or earlier, lines producing chips at these old nodes represent a full 54 percent of installed capacity, according to IDC. Those processes make up most of the installed capacity. Cars rely on chips made using mature-40-nanometer and older-manufacturing processes.