Recently, the world's third largest foundry chip chip chip chip chip CEO said that the next 5 to 10 years the integrated circuit industry may face a tight supply situation. The company is fully booked for wafer capacity through the end of 2023, he said.
In the absence of core become a normal background, the global new chip production line upsurge from this. Global semiconductor manufacturers will start construction of 19 high-capacity chip plants by the end of 2021 and another 10 by 2022, or 29 more over the next year, according to SEMI data. However, the large-scale expansion of the wafer production line will lead to a strong thirst for IC talents, and the huge talent gap will be a key bottleneck for future capacity breakthrough.
The phenomenon of missing core will not disappear in a short time
Many experts had predicted that the global shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic would ease as the epidemic gradually improved, but now it seems that in a short period of time, large and small "core shortage" may become a regular occurrence in the semiconductor industry.
The world's third largest chip foundry enterprises of Romania, listed on nasdaq last week, after that, Romania, such a message to the market, or even supply chain problems can be eased after the outbreak, chip demand in a short period of time will not reduce, so even if it spend billions of dollars in capital intensive business, also can improve profitability.
Automotive chips are known to be the hardest hit, but data shows that the shortage has spread from the global automotive and home appliance industries to electronics manufacturers and their suppliers. Apple recently said it would lose more than $6 billion in the fourth quarter of this year because of chip shortages.
In the face of lack of core tide is becoming more and more normal, if many electronic information enterprises want to continue to develop steadily, they need to have more countermeasures to solve this worldwide problem.
Construction of 19 chip plants will begin by the end of the year
In the face of the current shortage of core tide, the global chip manufacturers are frantically building factories, expanding production, to fill the lack of core "hole".
Semiconductor manufacturers will start construction of 19 high-capacity chip plants by the end of 2021 and 10 by 2022, for a total of 29 plants, to meet the demand for chips in the communications, computing, healthcare, online services and automotive markets, SEMI data shows.
Equipment spending at the 29 chip plants is expected to exceed us $140 billion in the future, as the industry push to address the global chip shortage continues to increase, said Alan Tsao, SEMI's global chief marketing officer and President of Taiwan. In the longer term, chip plant capacity expansion will also help meet strong demand for semiconductors for autonomous vehicles, AI, high performance computing and emerging applications such as 5G and 6G communications.
However, fabs are not built overnight. It usually takes at least two years for new plants to reach the installation phase, so most new plants built in 2021 will not have equipment installed until 2023 at the earliest, and commissioning to production will take some time. Therefore, it will take time for the distant water to quench the near thirst.
Demand for semiconductor talent is rising
The establishment of a new manufacturer is not to buy equipment and everything will be ok. On the contrary, the plant and equipment is the easiest step in the establishment of a new factory, and the most difficult is the construction of talent team.
Gu Wenjun, chief analyst of Xinmo Research, told China Electronics News that in recent years, China has added more than 20 new semiconductor manufacturers, but the number of new factories is increasing, but the shortage of chips is increasingly due to the lack of talent. There are more and more new subjects, but the talent resources are very limited, and each new subject can only dig the talent "corner" of the old subject. As a result, the scarce and integrated team became fragmented, and both the old and new players could not function effectively. Team fragmentation leads to inefficiency in the industry, which creates the phenomenon of "more players, less capacity".
So, how many technical people does it take to build a new production line? Take a 12-inch wafer fab with a monthly capacity of 40,000 wafers as an example. About 30 people are required to be directors or above, and the training period is more than 15 years. Nearly 100 department managers below director are needed, and the training cycle is about 10 years. About 350 backbone engineers need to be trained for at least 3 to 7 years. It takes about two years to train about 630 junior engineers. Visible, the new fabs most need is the support of talent power.
In addition, with the continuous improvement of the heat of the entire semiconductor industry in the past two years, people from the foundry is not only the new foundry entity, but also chip design, EDA tools, materials, equipment, semiconductor investment and other fields. According to Xinmou research, 30% of OEM r&d talent has gone to non-OEM fields. In addition, the huge talent gap determines that the next few years will be the peak of hiring, and the old main body is dug, the capacity of the new main body is difficult to achieve the desired effect in a short time.
It can be seen that for the knowledge-intensive semiconductor industry, talents are often the root of all kinds of problems, which is no exception to the phenomenon of missing core which gradually becomes normal.