To cope with the shortage of semiconductors that has been agitating the world since 2020, companies in the sector, and in particular the leaders TSMC, Intel, Samsung, have massively invested in additional means of production. Problem, the suppliers of the necessary machines are themselves afraid of running out of chips to meet this explosion in demand. The Semiconductor Equipment and Materials (SEMI) trade association is sounding the alarm in a blog post released May 2.
Too many new factories, not enough suppliers to fill them
The shortage of chips never ends. The most optimistic companies, which were aiming for a return to balance between supply and demand in 2022, no longer really believe in it. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, one of the three biggest semiconductor makers, admitted recently that he doesn’t see the situation improving until 2024.
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In an attempt to address the global chip shortage, construction of new factories has exploded. Between 2020 and 2024, 86 factories must come out of the ground and start producing. While this figure may seem ridiculous, it is actually huge.
Each factory very easily costs tens and tens of millions of euros, for the largest the unit of measurement is rather in billions of euros: the construction of a mega-site of advanced manufacturing in Germany will cost 17 billion euros to Intel. In Japan, TSMC plans to build a factory for around 6 billion euros.
These investments trickle down to the suppliers of these giants. Global equipment sales could exceed $100 billion in 2022. Sanjay Malhotra, Vice President of SEMI, with 25 years of industry experience, told the wall street journal“ Five or six years ago, I would have said $75 billion was far-fetched. “.
Naturally, there are not only positives in this semiconductor race. Suppliers are not always able to keep up. The average time to obtain the machines needed to manufacture the chips has increased from 3 to 6 months in 2020 to 14 months in July 2021. In some specific cases, the queue exceeds two years.
And the snake ends up biting its own tail. Ajit Manocha, CEO of SEMI fears that suppliers themselves will be affected by the shortage of chips and can no longer provide the machines to manufacture them. It specifically calls on governments and industry to ” Guarantee the supply of chips needed by suppliers ” to can ” build the tools essential to the rise of new factories “.
By dint of the diagram, he explains that these suppliers, 1% of the world market, will make it possible to considerably improve the supply of tools and therefore to manufacture more semiconductors.
Diagram proposed by the SEMI to support its request for priority supply.
Chip, where are you?
A shortage of chips would add to the difficulties of a sector which is already experiencing problems in sourcing chemical products, mainly produced in Ukraine and Russia, a shortage of silicon substrates which connect chips to printed circuits, a difficulty in to hire…
At the same time, the general demand for semiconductors is not weakening. The peak in computer purchases that occurred during the health crisis in 2020 has fallen, but at a still high level. The proliferation of connected electronic devices, electric vehicles, industrial automation systems will maintain a strong need for chips for a long time.
On the equipment supplier side, ASML Holding NV, a Dutch company known for making some of the most advanced and expensive tools on the planet, is trying to produce more, with the help of its customers. She does not expect to be able to do so before 2025…