Institution: The shortage of 8-inch wafers is expected to ease in the second half of 2023

[CNMO News] Last year, the semiconductor market was in a state of short supply, and related companies were very concerned about the production capacity of semiconductors. On February 8, CNMO learned that according to TrendForce Jibang Consulting Research, the 12-inch compound annual growth rate of the world's top ten fab foundries from 2020 to 2025 is about 10%, of which most fabs mainly focus on 12-inch capacity expansion, and 8-inch capacity continues to tighten. In this regard, the estimated mitigation time is about the second half of 2023 to 2024.

PMIC and AudioCodec have successively moved to 12-inch manufacturing to alleviate the shortage of 8-inch production capacity. In terms of PMIC, at present, IC design companies including MediaTek, Qualcomm and Realtek have successively planned to transfer part of the PMIC to 12-inch 90/55nm production, due to the time required for product process conversion to develop and verify, so the relief help for 8-inch production capacity in a certain period of time is still small, and it is expected that in 2024, the mainstream will be effectively relieved after a large number of transfers.

Audio codec, at present, Realtek and SMIC International Cooperation have transferred the Audio Codec for laptops from 8 inches to 12 inches 55nm process development, which is expected to be mass-produced in mid-2022, which is expected to improve product supply.

In addition, TrendForce Jibang Consulting also said that mainstream large-size Driver ICs are still manufactured in 8-inch wafers, and there is no trend to move to 12 inches.