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The global "core shortage" is difficult to solve the industry or the supply is tight for a long time

Source: www.qierge.net Author: Qi Erge Time: 2022-11-10 14:11 View: 655570

The second brother of the enterprise: the global "core shortage" is difficult to solve the industry or the supply is tight for a long time

How serious is the global chip shortage? Tom Caulfield, CEO of Groffond Semiconductor, an American chip manufacturer, recently said that the company's wafer production capacity had been sold out by the end of 2023. He believes that in the next 5 to 10 years, the industry may face a long-term tight supply situation.

Tom Caulfield's view is not unreasonable. Since the obvious shortage of chips began in 2020, all parties have never stopped predicting when the chip shortage will be alleviated. Some experts said last year that the shortage of chips could be alleviated by the second half of 2021, but the facts proved that such a judgment was too optimistic.

The current shortage of chips is due to the delayed impact of COVID-19, which has impacted the production capacity of enterprises. But the more important reason is that the demand of downstream traditional consumer electronics, wearable intelligent devices, PCs, industrial control and other fields has exploded in full swing, especially the rapid development of the new energy automobile industry, which has led to the rapid growth of chip demand. With the development of electrification and intelligence of automobiles, more and more chips will be used in the field of new energy vehicles. Data shows that the chip demand of new energy vehicles is three to four times that of traditional vehicles.

The strong demand for chips will continue in the future. In response to the statement that "chips are the oil of the 21st century", some executives of chip companies even said recently that this still underestimated the importance of chips, and chips will be everywhere like air in the future.

While the demand for chips continues to be strong, the supply side capacity has been slow to match. Although the global wafer factories have started large-scale production expansion, especially Samsung, Intel and other large manufacturers have launched production expansion plans worth tens of billions of dollars or even hundreds of billions of dollars, these manufacturers have invested a considerable part in the field of cutting-edge chips to compete for the future dominance of the chip industry.

In contrast, investment in mature process chips is slightly insufficient. Capacity expansion requires complex processes such as building plants, buying machines and debugging equipment, which requires at least a year and a half. In the current situation, the price of upstream production equipment is rising, and the profit margin of mature process chips is low, which makes manufacturers have little incentive to expand production.

From all aspects of the situation, there is still no signal to alleviate the chip shortage. Therefore, enterprises in need should be prepared to fight a "protracted war", take precautions and plan for the future.