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UMC is Feeling the Pressure from Chinese Foundries

TheLostSwede

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The chip shortage discussion has been very focused on TSMC for some reason and although the company is without a doubt the world's leading foundry, the company is making its living from being a cutting edge foundry, whereas much of the components that there's a shortage of are made on far older nodes at many different foundries. Taiwanese UMC is one of the foundries that makes many of the automotive semiconductors, as well as key components when it comes to power regulation and is considered the world's third largest foundry.

Until 2018, UMC was competing head on with TSMC, although the company was always about a node behind TSMC, which led to a management team decision to slow down its node transition and instead to focus on speciality technologies. The company has done well in this niche, with a revenue of about US$6.2 billion in 2020. However, UMC is starting to feel the pressure from its competitors in China, as the PRC government is making a push for local production of local IC designs.




That in itself might not be a challenge for UMC, as the company is offering some unique products to its customers, such as mixed-mode RF and RF on SOI, various MEMS and CMOS image sensor solutions and high Voltage solutions. That said, some 16 percent of UMC's revenue is from companies based in China and this is likely to decline as the likes of SMIC and HLMC are starting to catch up. A bigger worry is the fact that the PRC government is giving incentives to local IC design companies if they produce their designs using local foundries.

Currently, UMC has long-term contracts with some 70 percent of its clients that stretches three to six years into the future, but with increasing competition it looks like UMC is going to have to work on bringing more advanced node offerings to its customers. It should also be noted that GlobalFoundries is currently UMC's biggest competitors when it comes to a lot of the specialty products, especially SOI type products, although GlobalFoundries are in a similar situation to UMC and both companies are going to have to invest in more advanced technologies over the next couple of years to stay competitive.

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"Taiwanese UMC is one of the foundries that makes many of the automotive semiconductors, "

So they're the reason we are waiting 6-8 months to get a vehicle??
 
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"Taiwanese UMC is one of the foundries that makes many of the automotive semiconductors, "

So they're the reason we are waiting 6-8 months to get a vehicle??
No, the real reason is all the senseless accessories people expect as standard now.
Heated steering wheel, heated seats, climate control, electric moon roof, navigation system etc
Not to mention all the driver safety aides for incompetent drivers to make the roads safer.
 

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No, the real reason is all the senseless accessories people expect as standard now.
Heated steering wheel, heated seats, climate control, electric moon roof, navigation system etc
Not to mention all the driver safety aides for incompetent drivers to make the roads safer.
Don't get me started on moon roofs. You're either going to be an idiot like me and leave it open during a rainstorm or the drain pipes will get plugged up and water will leak into the vehicle anyways. I will say though, they're putting a lot of tech in vehicles these days. It seems to work well when I have some of these vehicles as a loaner, but my simple base model Subaru seems to just chug along just fine without any of the bells and whistles. Hell, I'm impressed with the 138k miles I've put on the OE clutch with only some noise from some bearings when it's nutty cold outside until the vehicle warms up.
 
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Government giving incentives to local IC design companies if they're using local foundries is good, but it was PRC soo it's bad I guess?
 
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No, the real reason is all the senseless accessories people expect as standard now.
Heated steering wheel, heated seats, climate control, electric moon roof, navigation system etc
Not to mention all the driver safety aides for incompetent drivers to make the roads safer.
Well, I don't see how driver safety aids are anything but a good thing. They help "competent drivers" as well. Shit happens, they might/can/do save lives.
 
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Government giving incentives to local IC design companies if they're using local foundries is good, but it was PRC soo it's bad I guess?

What the hell is wrong with you, don't you know this is the new cold war, China is bad.
Jokes aside, people are really taking this anti China thing get out of control. Like China is the only bad government in the world we all do bussiness with.
 
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No, the real reason is all the senseless accessories people expect as standard now.
Heated steering wheel, heated seats, climate control, electric moon roof, navigation system etc
Not to mention all the driver safety aides for incompetent drivers to make the roads safer.
Indeed! Instead of the regulations that made our cars less durable (1 liter turbo engines and such) We should focus on banning all the unnecessary crap and make lightweight cars again.
Hell I could live even without power steering and windows (okay, AC is a must:p). This way we would not only need less energy to move the chassis but would also need less materials to produce our cars.
 
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Well, I don't see how driver safety aids are anything but a good thing. They help "competent drivers" as well. Shit happens, they might/can/do save lives.
Indeed. The reality I see is that your average human is kinda bad at driving - we're just not that consistent in our performance at tasks like that. And that is a problem when timing and coordination are often paramount. We really aren't built for driving to begin with. That's why we try to build everything to do with it to be more for us... to accomadate for our slow, squishy bodies with their dumb brains and maybe not get us squished at unnaturally high velocities for a human to be moving at. Not to mention, infrastructure and conditions in many places are not the safest. Humans do make mistakes. We drive when we don't want to be driving, stressed out, excited about something else, what have you. We also sometimes have to drive in unfamiliar places, which may take away from the ability to react as well as one usually would.

I mean... let's say it is a matter of competency. Some drivers certainly are more competent than others. Do we just let the less competent ones die in accidents at an increased rate? Or do we maybe just look at safety features that WE may not feel we need and realize that somebody out there is still upright and moving right now because of that? I tend to agree... I don't really lament that, or blame other drivers. Driving just IS dangerous. Period.

Though honestly, kinda beside the point to me. I'd rather see less people really needing cars to get around, instead being able to use cheaper, safer alternatives. Roads and highways kinda suck... at least in America they do. They bring so many other detrimental things with them, too. Like, the roads and massive friggin parking lots needed everywhere are entire sets of absurd planning and engineering problems in themselves. The need for convenience for cars puts us all in that purgatory. I don't really need a car, personally... except nothing here is really walking distance and there is no public transit. I'd love to move around where I live with less risk and cost. I'd rather see better infrastructure and better ways of getting around than taking one way that is super-dangerous, extremely environmentally unsound, expensive, inefficient, and surprisingly inconvenient, and trying to make it a little less... all of those things by just making more stuff to go with it. I just also understand how insurmountable it would be to *really* get away from cars here. So safety features it is. Some of them, I think are rooted more in marketing than science but that just is what it is in this economy. Gotta always be selling something new or you cease to exist. A whole different problem, yet closely related to so many of our problems :laugh:
 
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Indeed. The reality I see is that your average human is kinda bad at driving
I'm so bad at it, I opted not to renew my license after experiencing way too many issues with my self awareness skills.

For me, self driving cars can't come soon enough. For now, there is family and uber. Still safer than me on the road.
 
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I'm so bad at it, I opted not to renew my license after experiencing way too many issues with my self awareness skills.

For me, self driving cars can't come soon enough. For now, there is family and uber. Still safer than me on the road.
People think about how complicated a self-driving car is and are always at least a little dubious. Like it's this grand milestone. But nobody ever thinks about how badly humans around them drive every single day when thinking about self-driving cars. It's an illusion. Truth is, the bar really isn't that high to begin with :laugh:
 
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I'm so bad at it, I opted not to renew my license after experiencing way too many issues with my self awareness skills.

For me, self driving cars can't come soon enough. For now, there is family and uber. Still safer than me on the road.
Same lol. It's safer to hand me a AK-47 than putting me behind a wheel
 

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Patiently waiting for the next semiconductor bust due to over investment. It seems like the mature nodes will be reaping the price collapse instead of the cutting edge, we might not get cheaper graphics cards yet.
 
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Patiently waiting for the next semiconductor bust due to over investment. It seems like the mature nodes will be reaping the price collapse instead of the cutting edge, we might not get cheaper graphics cards yet.

The cutting edge doesn't just depend on more fabs, depends on R&D to make the process efficient so there isn't much waste, the problem that plagued intel. I see all the investment going to new buildings to take advantage of government subsidies.
 

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The cutting edge doesn't just depend on more fabs, depends on R&D to make the process efficient so there isn't much waste, the problem that plagued intel. I see all the investment going to new buildings to take advantage of government subsidies.
Indeed.
 
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