SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY
UPDATE
November 2015
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Tsinghua
Unigroup Expands as Chipmaker
X-Fab
Invests in Malaysian Wafer Fab
Soraa to
Open New Semiconductor Fabrication Plant in Syracuse, New York
Mie
Fujitsu Semiconductor to Use Swirling Induction Type HVAC
Chinese
Company to Raise $12.5B for Memory Wafer Fab
Fraunhofer IPMS to Upgrade Cleanroom
China's Tsinghua Unigroup intends to become the world's
third-largest chipmaker by investing $47 billion over the next five years,
according to a report.
Zhao Weiguo, chair of the state-backed conglomerate, said the
company had approached a U.S.-based chipmaker and that a deal could be completed
by the end of this month. Without going into details, he said acquiring a
majority stake was not likely to happen since it was too "sensitive" for the
U.S. government.
Zhao noted how being in the top three is critical in
developing the business in the chip industry, adding that the next five years is
key to the company's success. He also mentioned reports that China imports more
chips than crude oil annually.
The top three companies in the global chip ranking to date are
Intel, Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm, respectively. The global chip market
was worth $355 billion last year.
Tsinghua's planned investment—a few billions shy of Intel's
$50-billion chip revenue last year—could shake the NAND chip industry, which is
90-per cent controlled by the top five chipmakers. NAND chips are used for
storing music, photos and other data on mobile electronic devices such as
smartphones and tablets.
The last two years saw Tsinghua spending more than $9.4
billion for acquisitions and investments both domestically and abroad. This
includes stakes bought from Western Digital, a U.S. data storage company, and
Taiwan's Powertech Technology.
Earlier this month, Tsinghua also expressed interest in
MediaTek, a Taiwan-based fabless semiconductor company that provides
system-on-chip solutions for wireless communications, HDTV, DVD and Blu-ray.
However, Taiwanese law bans China from investing in local chip design companies.
The Chinese conglomerate also tried to buy Micron Technology
for $23 billion in August, but it was rejected immediately due to national
security concerns. This move, however, showed Tsinghua's determination to expand
in the NAND chip market.
Pundits see these investments as a strategic priority for the
Chinese government, which is serious about ending China's dependence on foreign
semiconductors. The Asian giant is also planning to develop a digitized armed
forces to match other advanced militaries. In addition, China plans to develop
its server and networking equipment industries amidst concerns on cyber
espionage.
X-Fab Silicon Foundries SE has revealed that it will invest
$114 million in its wafer fab in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia to meet demand for
0.18µm and 0.35µm manufacturing. The state of Sarawak is a major shareholder in
the More-than-Moore chipmaker and so has an interest in the success of the
company and of its Asian wafer fab.
The investment will be made between 2015 and 2017 and includes
capital expenditure of about $29 million being made in the current year. Revenue
from the Sarawak wafer fab has grown 25 per cent for each of the past two years
and similar growth is expected for the next two years, making the investment
necessary, X-Fab indicated.
Sarawak has been in a shareholder in X-Fab since the company
took over the Kuching wafer fab through a merger of 1st Silicon (Malaysia) Sdn.
Bhd. and X-Fab Semiconductor Foundries AG in 2006. The site now produces
analogue and mixed-signal circuits for use in automotive, industrial and medical
applications.
"X-Fab's operation in Sarawak has been driving the growth of
local economy. They are employing more than 1,000 staff where more than 80 per
cent of them are considered to be high-income earners. We believe that this
expansion will act as a catalyst in attracting other high technology firms to
establish their operations in Malaysia as they will be able to leverage on the
wafer fabrication services provided by X-FAB, " said Dato' Sri Mustapa Mohamed,
Minister of International Trade and Industry.
"The State of Sarawak as a major shareholder is very satisfied
with the recent development of both the X-FAB Group and, more specifically, the
profitable growth of X-Fab Sarawak, said Dato' Seri Tarmizi Hj. Sulaiman, chair
of the board of X-Fab Silicon Foundries SE.
Rudi De Winter, CEO of X-Fab said that in 2016 he expected
production at X-Fab Sarawak to be responsible for more than 50 per cent of the
group's total revenue for the first time.
Soraa, the world leader in the development of advanced
lighting products and gallium nitride on gallium nitride (GaN on GaN™)
LED technology, announced that it will open a new semiconductor fabrication
plant in Syracuse, New York.
In partnership with the State of New York, the company will
construct a new state-of-the-art GaN on GaN™ LED fabrication facility
that will employ hundreds of workers. Working in coordination with SUNY College
of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE), the new facility is on
pace for shell completion by the end of this year with production beginning in
the second half of 2016. Soraa currently operates an LED fabrication plant in
Fremont, California, one of only a few in the United States.
"Central New York's economic growth is due in large part to
high-tech companies like Soraa that recognize the region’s wealth of assets and
resources," Governor Cuomo said. "Today's announcement not only means economic
stability for the region, but it also strengthens Central New York as leader in
the development of the clean technology that will help light and power the
future."
“Syracuse is an optimal location for the new fabrication
facility for a number of reasons including the innovative high-tech vision and
strategy of Governor Cuomo; the ability to attract some of the best and
brightest scientists and engineers in the world; and the capacity to tightly
control the product quality and intellectual property around our lighting
products through our partnership with SUNY Poly CNSE,” commented Jeff Parker,
CEO of Soraa. “Since we launched our first product in 2012, global market
reception for our high quality of light LED products has been phenomenal and
sales have soared. The new facility will significantly increase our
manufacturing capacity to meet this growing demand.”
It was announced in late 2013 that Soraa would expand its
manufacturing operations to the Riverbend Commerce Park in Buffalo, NY. The
plans outlined sharing the space with solar module manufacturer, Silevo.
However, following the acquisition of Silevo by SolarCity, the facilities at
Riverbend could no longer accommodate both Soraa’s fabrication facility and the
necessary square footage for SolarCity’s expanded operations. As a result, it
was back to the drawing board.
“Following the change with the Riverbend space, we remained
focused on finding an optimal solution that worked for the State, Soraa and the
talented workers that call upstate New York home,” added Parker. “We’re back on
track with a great location and are targeting to employ at least 300 people to
support a revenue stream of over $1 billion once fully functional.”
"By taking Albany's nanotechnology-based public-private
economic development model across New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo has
established an unmatched engine for long-term growth, and this latest
announcement is a perfect example of how his jobs-focused strategy continues to
pay dividends,” said Dr. Alain E. Kaloyeros, President and CEO of SUNY Poly.
“SUNY Poly is thrilled to partner with Soraa to locate this advanced
manufacturing facility and its resultant jobs, as well as the hands-on
educational offerings that this will present for New York’s students, adjacent
to the Film Hub in Syracuse, where the company's cutting edge lighting
technology can be adapted for production purposes. Each component of this
collaboration is further proof that the Governor’s unique vision for crafting
commercialization and manufacturing-based opportunities is a powerful recipe for
a resurgent New York.”
In 2007, a team of pioneering professors from the worlds of
engineering and semiconductors—Dr. Shuji Nakamura, Nobel Laureate and inventor
of the blue laser and LED; Dr. Steven DenBaars, founder of Nitres; and Dr. James
Speck of U.C. Santa Barbara's College of Engineering—came together and made a
bet on an LED technology platform completely different than current industry
practice, a technology most industry experts at the time considered to be
impossible to execute.
According to the company, Soraa bet that GaN on GaN™
LEDs would produce more light per area of LED, be of higher quality, and be more
cost-effective than technology based on other foreign substrates like sapphire
or silicon carbide. This strategy ran against every trend in the LED industry.
That bet paid off: today, the company’s LEDs emit more light per LED material
than any other LED; handle more electric current per area than any other LED;
and the company’s products produce best-in-class color quality with full
spectrum light similar to sun-light, while also delivering the brightest beams.
Soraa’s proprietary GaN on GaN™ LED technology has
allowed the company to make ordinary lighting vibrant, brilliant and efficient.
Soraa’s full visible spectrum GaN on GaN™ LED lamps provide unmatched light
output, perfectly uniform beams, exceptional rendering of colors and whites,
full dimmability, long lamp life, a perfect beam with a single clear shadow,
dramatically improved energy efficiency, and excellent compatibility.
Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd has revealed that the company's
Mie plant in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, is toting a production line that uses
advanced, environmentally-friendly technologies. The cleanroom is equipped
throughout with Swirling Induction Type HVAC System (SWIT) from Takasago Thermal
Engineering Co. Ltd that will have a smaller environmental footprint than
conventional systems while ensuring high-quality manufacturing. This is the
world's first use of this technology in wafer fabrication cleanrooms for
semiconductors, stated the company.
Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor and Takasago Thermal Engineering
focused on reducing the plant's environmental footprint while maintaining the
priority on safety and short construction time, seeking to design and build an
environmentally friendly eco-plant. For the HVAC system in particular, they
chose the most advanced technology and built a system with outstanding energy
efficiency.
The cleanroom uses SWIT, or swirling induction type HVAC,
which creates temperature strata inside the cleanroom, and works with rising air
currents created by heat-generating equipment to carry airborne dust toward the
ceiling. This makes it possible to maintain a steady temperature in the work
areas at lower elevations in the room more efficiently, so that the volume of
air being supplied can be lower than in conventional HVAC systems. Also, because
this allows for air to be supplied at a higher temperature, the chilled-water
temperature can also be higher, which contributes to energy savings. Compared to
existing systems, the annual energy used is expected to be roughly 47 per cent
lower for transport power and roughly 32 per cent lower for heat-source power.
Additionally, this system helps to simplify building
construction, so it contributes greatly to a shorter construction process and
lower construction costs.
Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor is building this cleanroom to run a
40nm process line. Due to go into service in fiscal 2016, it will provide
customers with ultralow-power technologies and embedded non-volatile memory
technologies, for the IoT market and automotive electronics.
A state-controlled conglomerate in China is planning to invest
roughly $12.5 billion in a memory chip factory. Related acquisitions by Tsinghua
Unigroup Ltd is expected to be done through an affiliated company, Tongfang
Guoxin Electronics Co. Ltd, reports indicated.
Tongfang Guoxin is a manufacturer of piezoelectric quartz
crystal components that is traded on the Shenzhen stock exchange. The company
has said it will raise about $12.5 billion mainly provided by Tsinghua Unigroup
affiliated companies in a stock exchange regulatory filing, the reports said.
This would be the biggest-ever private placement of stock by a company in
mainland China, they added.
The amount Tongfang Guoxin is looking to raise is more than
four times the company's market value in October, according to a report. The
same report said that about $9.4 billion would be used to finance the
construction of a memory wafer fab and nearly $600 million would be used to
purchase a 25 per cent stake in packaging and test services company Powertech
Technology. The remaining $2.55 billion would be used for other acquisitions,
the report quoted Tongfang Guoxin as saying.
The total cost of the wafer fab would be nearly $14.65
billion. The fab is likely to be focused on the production of non-volatile
memory such as NAND flash.
Tsinghua Unigroup, an offshoot of Tsinghua University, is one
of the levers being used by the Chinese government to build up the country's
position in the semiconductor industry by way of a series of mergers and
acquisitions.
In July Tsinghua Unigroup floated the idea of a $23 billion
bid for US memory chip company Micron Technology Inc. And in October it was
announced that Chinese state-controlled Unisplendor Corp. would take a 15 per
cent stake in disk drive company Western Digital, which in turn is buying flash
memory chip company SanDisk Corp.
The cleanroom for microsystems at Fraunhofer IPMS is
undergoing an upgrade.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS is
upgrading its microsystem cleanroom in a €30m investment. The upgrade to the
Dresden, Germany-based research institute will involve moving up from the
current 150mm wafer base to a 200mm process line for research, development and
pilot fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).
The funding comes from state and federal sources as well as
from the European Regional Development Fund (EFRE). Following approval of the
investment by SAB, the Development Bank of Saxony, the project can now get
underway.
Both Prof. Hubert Lakner and Prof. Harald Schenk, Directors of
the Fraunhofer IPMS, commented: 'With the help of the state, the federal
government and the EU, it is now possible for us to continue providing modern
and innovative research and development ensuring efficient cooperation at the
highest level with business and industry partners. 'Our Institute is one of the
pioneers and the innovation leader in the 'More than Moore' field. With the
approval of the expeditious start of investment for the 200mm expansion, we can
now take specific action to expand our leading position among global competitors
and to address emerging fields.'
Fraunhofer IPMS's most important R&D partners have already
transitioned to 200mm technology. Uniform wafer size makes it possible to attain
the work distribution necessary for processing, allowing for further
miniaturization and functional integration. The Institute will establish a
modern technology basis by 2017, which will provide innovative research and
development to national and international partners.
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