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Taking apart some recent semi industry numbers and putting them back together again |
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Aug 08, 2007 at 09:58 AM |
Three bundles of semiconductor market statistics hit within the last week, two of them regular reports and one not-so-regular.
I'll get back to the quarterlies---SIA's sales figures and SEMI's Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) wafer shipments---but first a few words on the more-unusual/alarming announcement from IC Insights.
Bill McClean and his number-crunching and analysis crew sent out what they called an "alert" about a possible late-2007/early-2008 capacity shortage at the Big Four pure-play foundries---TSMC, UMC, Chartered, and SMIC. The market research firm projects a jump in foundry capacity utilization from 1Q07's 78.5% to a nearly tapped-out 97.5% in 4Q07. Furthermore, although the number of wafers shipped by the Big Four will increase about 42% between the first and fourth quarters, the foundries' processing capacities will only rise 14%. Bill thinks this portends serious capital expenditure increases by the foundry quartet next year. His word to the wise? Get your foundry orders in now!
As for SIA's latest data, global chip sales rose 2.1% over the first half of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006, increasing to $121 billion. But the most recent quarter saw a drop in sales of 2% vs. 1Q07, more in line with recent across-the-board forecast reductions from the market research community.
Without trying to sound too smug, SMG reported more of the same of what has been an upwardly mobile trend in quarterly wafer shipments. The second quarter saw a 5% increase in the amount of silicon shipped compared to the first quarter, hitting 2.201 billion square inches. This represents a 12% uptick from 2Q06. Growth was mainly attributed to burgeoning 300-mm shipments.
Note that the silicon numbers do not include solar-wafer silicon real estate shipped, which would add hundreds of millions of additional square inches. (Does someone have those combined semi-solar silicon-wafer stats?) SEMI's Dan Tracy also told me that the SMG surveys its members in early October for their respective forecasts, and he suspects that their prognostications will come in close to the historical average--about 8-10%.
Now for some numbers games. Bill of IC Insights sent me the detailed chart of the Big Four foundries' capacity, shipments, and utilization. Dan of SEMI provided me with the SMG calculation table that breaks down how many square inches of silicon per wafer size; for example, a 200-mm wafer contains 48.69 square inches, while a 300-mm slice comes in at 109.55 square inches of the sandy stuff. (I know, metric and English units playing together again---see rant below.)
If you convert IC Insights' second-quarter Big Four capacity figure---4,019,000 8-inch/200-mm equivalents---into square inches of silicon, the number jumps to 195,685,110. As for the wafers shipped by the quartet in 2Q07---3,485,000---the inch count hits 169,684,650. Conversely, if you turn the SMG 2Q07 shipment amount---2,201,000,000---into 8-inch substrates, you come up with 45,204,354 200-mm wafers. Note that the foundry shipment number for 2Q07 accounts for about 8.9% of the total wafers shipped.
One last tweak of the IC Insights figures: If we convert the projected annual capacity utilization (16,670,000) and shipment (14,890,000) numbers from wafer equivalents to square inches of silicon, the foursome will have collective capacities of 811,662,300 square inches and shipments totaling 724,994,100 square inches.
A while back Chip Shots looked at the how much silicon was shipped for every dollar of IC sales revenue, simply dividing the SIA figures by the SMG figures. The numbers stayed pretty constant between 2001 and 2006, with 30-35 inches of silicon shipped for every chip sales dollar. When we do the math for the first half of 2007, the inches per dollar average slipped under the "historical" average. Dividing 4.301 billion square inches of silicon into the $121 billion of sales, we come up with 28.13 square inches of Si for every buckaroo. Interesting, yes, but meaningful? Not sure.
Finally, I have to restate my puzzlement about why SMG hasn't converted to metric altogether and continues to use square inches for its measurement standard, instead of using millimeters or centimeters. I know it's been discussed among group members---the German and Japanese accents combining with the American accents to create a cacophony of productive discourse, no doubt---but once again, the quarterly shipment report comes out, still measured in square inches. (Perhaps a transitional period of stating the amount in both metric and English units might be in order?)
In the interest of metrological consistency, here are SMG's numbers, in metric units:
- 2Q07 silicon shipped: 1,419,997,160,000 (1.420 trillion) sq mm, or 1,419,997 sq m
- 1Q07 silicon shipped: 1,354,836,000,000 (1.355 trillion) sq mm, or 1,354,836 sq m
And that number for square inches of silicon per 8-in. wafer? About 31,413 sq mm for every 200-mm wafer.
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