Anyone familiar with Chip Shots knows my proclivity for periodic ranting against the use of the English measurement system for measuring wafer sizes.
SEMI's silicon manufacturers group (SMG) released its 2007 statistics last week, so I am obligated to convert their inches to meters, as well as offer a few, simple yet interesting statistical comparisons with the wider semi world.
For six years running, the amount of silicon shipped to the worldwide chipmaking market has grown and revenues have increased. From 2006 to 2007, square inches, er meters, expanded about 8%, while revenues for the silicon houses jumped 21%, according to SMG. A look back at 2003's numbers reveals that the market has more than doubled since then; with consecutive years of $2.1 billion gains seen in 2005-06 and 2006-07, the sector reached $12.1 billion last year versus $5.8 billion four years earlier.
As for the area figures, 2007 saw about 5.588 million square meters (8.66 billion square inches) in waferage shipped, compared to 5.159 million square meters (7.996 billion square inches) in 2006. SMG says it expects the "fundamental drivers" (i.e., better 300 mm product mix) to remain in place for continued growth, so it's possible the industry will come close to or pass the 6 million square meter (or 6 square kilometer) mark in 2008.
Keep in mind this does not include any solar wafers (only polished and nonpolished silicon substrates for chip use), and that the photovoltaics sector's amount of area shipped remains elusive. (If anyone knows where those PV silicon figures reside, please let me know!). SMG didn't mention anything about possible polysilicon shortages either, which may or may not impact wafer availability and supply. The pushback of REC's poly Si plant ramp, LDK Solar's recent reductions in poly Si production forecasts, and Hemlock Semi's "eagerness" to add enough capacity to meet its contractual obligations all point to possible tremors in the wafer-materials supply chain, at least for the crystalline-silicon solar sector.
What other sector has experienced six straight years of consecutive growth? The global semiconductor industry, of course. In previous blogs, I calculated the dollars in chip sales revenues per area of silicon shipped. Throughout the 2000s, the number hovered between $30 and $35 for every square inch of silicon shipped (sorry, back to English system). That trend came to an end in 2007, when the $255.6 billion in revenues divided by the 8.66 billion square inches resulted in an average of $29.51 (compared to $30.97 in 2006).
How about comparing the silicon sector's revenues to their customers in the fabs? When you divide the sales numbers of the wafer guys into the chip folks' totals for 2007, you get $21.12; in other words, for every dollar that Sumcos, SEHs, Siltronics, and MEMCs of the industry make, their customers pull in more than $21. In 2006, the number came in at $24.77, so in this respect, the wafer houses appear to be getting more bang per sold-substrate buck. That phenomenon also holds true when you divide the silicon revenues by area shipped, and see that number jump from about $1.25 per square inch in 2006 to $1.40 in 2007 (and way up from about 89 cents in 2003).
If the above calculations are done metrically for 2007, that's $45,740 and change of chips sold for every square meter of silicon platters shipped (vs. $48,016 in 2006), and $2166 in wafer-maker revenues for every square meter sold, sealed, and delivered to the fabs (up significantly from about $1938 in 2006, btw). Don't those beefier figures have a nicer ring to them, oh ye metric-system doubters and procrastinators (that means you, SMG)?
What about the slipping value of the dollar? One of the simplest ways to calculate the greenback's decline is to compare it against the Euro. The dollar lost about 10% versus the big E in 2007. In 2006 dollars, the silicon revenues for 2007 come in at only $10.89 billion, still an increase but not nearly as attractive as before. The SIA numbers for 2007 register at a relatively paltry $230 billion in 2006 US money when using the same statistical comparison, nearly $18 billion less than the previous year's worldwide semi sales total.
Chip Shots makes no claim to master-class expertise in economics and market stats (obviously!), so I leave it up to the real number-crunchers and quantitative trend-spotters to tell us what this all means. In metric units, hopefully.
But a couple of things do rise to the top of the statistical muddle: by several indicators, the chipmakers generate less money per unit of silicon than before and the wafer-makers' cash flow per slab of semiconductor-bound silicon shipped is much healthier than in years past.
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