Due to the US chip sanctions on the mainland in recent years, the public is generally concerned about the competition of semiconductor companies. As far as semiconductor foundry companies are concerned, the most talked about are TSMC and Samsung; The two semiconductor foundries are far ahead of the curve and are currently engaged in head-to-head at the 3nm process level.
In the 2022 semiconductor foundry revenue ranking, TSMC and Samsung, which ranked first and second, have 60% and 15% of the market share, respectively. In fourth and fifth, the American foundry GF and SMIC, which is more concerned, have a market share of about 6%.
GF recently announced its 2022 results, showing that its revenue increased from $6.6 billion in 2021 to $8.1 billion in 2022, an increase of 23%; At the same time, profit increased by 67% from $1.8 billion to $3.1 billion.
For comparison, let's look at SMIC's revenue in 2022, which is about $7.3 billion and net profit is about $1.8 billion. As you can see, GF's profitability is slightly higher than that of SMIC.
GF acquired IBM's 14nm fab in 2014 and the photonics know-how and IP of IBM researchers in 2015 to begin working on silicon photonic chips. As a result, GF's silicon photonics chip business integrates the most advanced technology in the U.S. in this field, and it has the industry's only high-volume 300mm CMOS manufacturing foundry for silicon photonics. Of course, GF's biggest competitor in the field, Intel, also has the top capabilities.
GF's silicon photonics chip platform integrates photonic components with high-performance CMOS logic and RF, and also enables the integration of optical input and optical input modules with 2.5D and 3D heterogeneity of other semiconductor chips. These technologies can be used in a wide range of fields, such as light detection and ranging radar (LiDAR), quantum computing, and consumer optical networks.
GF currently has two silicon photonics chip high-performance solutions in its portfolio: the Fotonix photonics platform and the silicon germanium 9HP platform.
GF's second-generation silicon photonics platform, Fotonix, combines high-volume silicon manufacturing with innovative 2.5D and 3D stacking to integrate electrical, optical and communications functions into a single monolithic design, helping customers integrate more product functionality on a chip.
GF's GF Fab 8 facility in Malta, New York, USA, provides the Fotonix process platform.
The silicon germanium 9HP platform provides discrete high-performance component solutions for optical transceivers.
To help customers get started designing silicon photonic chips, GF also offers proprietary optoelectronic process design kits (PDKs).
GF is partnering with industry leaders including Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Inc, Marvell and NVIDIA, as well as breakthrough photonic computing leaders including Ayar Labs, Lightmatter, PsiQuantum, Ranovus and Xanadu, to deliver innovative, unique, feature-rich solutions.
As we all know, GF terminated the research and development of 7nm chip projects in 2018 and withdrew from the competition for advanced mobile phone chip manufacturing processes, resulting in its revenue ratio in 2022, mobile phone chips continued to decline to 46%. But we can see that some of GF's differentiated businesses, such as IOT and communications and data center products, increased from 28% in 2021 to 36% in 2022. This reflects GF's competitive differentiation in the foundry market, and of course, its competitiveness is also reflected in its profitability in 2022.
Well, about the silicon photonics chip business of GF, which has the world's leading silicon photonic chip manufacturing capacity in the United States and is also one of the direct competitors of SMIC, the mainland's leading chip foundry, is introduced here. Everyone thinks, just in the silicon photonic chip manufacturing capacity, what way do we have to overtake in the corner? Let's continue talking next time!