Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corporation announced today that their joint venture Fab 7 manufacturing facility at Yokkaichi Plant has been approved to receive up to 92.9 billion yen subsidy from the Japanese government. The subsidy will be granted under a designated government program aimed at facilitating corporate investment in cutting-edge semiconductor production facilities and securing stable production of semiconductors in Japan.

Leveraging their 20-year joint venture partnership, Kioxia and Western Digital will continue to accelerate the development and production of cutting-edge flash memory at the Yokkaichi Plant, the largest semiconductor plant in Japan. In addition, the two companies will contribute to the development of semiconductor-related industries and talent.

The US Congress hasn't been able to agree on passing what is known as the CHIPS Act, which consists of some US$52 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturers and it appears that Intel isn't very pleased. As such, the company is said to have put the brakes on the groundbreaking ceremony for its planned Ohio fab, which was meant to take place on the 22nd of July. Intel allegedly sent out an email to various state and federal lawmakers that it has placed the ceremony on hold, indefinitely due to the lack of progress on the CHIPS Act. In an official response from Intel to the Register, the company said that the event hasn't been rescheduled, which the publications says means that there's no new date planned for the groundbreaking ceremony.

It will apparently still be held at some point, but the Intel spokesperson had no answer when questioned if the ceremony was contingent on the CHIPS Act. However, the Register was told that the planned construction start date remains unchanged, for now. That said, Intel also issued a statement saying "the scope and pace of our expansion in Ohio will depend heavily on funding from the CHIPS Act.", which was also part of the initial press release back in January when the fab plans were announced. If the CHIPS Act doesn't happen, Intel's plan seems to be to focus on countries outside of the US where the company is getting subsidies, although the Ohio fab is still likely to be built, just at a slower pace. Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger hasn't been mincing his words either, having told Congress "We've already wasted several quarters since the Senate acted last year, and now it's time for us to move forward rapidly," back in March.

Nanya Technology, part of the Formosa Plastics Group, which is one of the largest conglomerates in Taiwan, will hold a ground-breaking ceremony for its new 12-inch fab that will be built in New Taipei City later this week. It'll be the biggest investment Nanya has done in the past decade, as the company is investing US$10.1 billion into building the new fab. This is obviously a lot less than TSMC is investing, but DRAM is made on different nodes to those that TSMC makes its customers products on, since DRAM doesn't benefit as much from node shrinking as other types of semiconductors.

The new fab will be located near one of Nanya's current fabs, in the Taishan district. Mass production is scheduled to start some time in 2025 and the fab is said to have a monthly capacity of around 45,000 wafers. Right now it's scheduled for a 10 nm technology node, but this might change by the time that the fab is up and running, especially considering that Nanya is already producing a range of 10 nm based products in some of its current fabs. Nanya's goal is to develop its next generation of 10 nm DRAM independently from other DRAM makers, as to avoid having to pay patent licence fees to its competitors.

According to TrendForce, market conditions in 1H22 were chaotic and there was disparate demand for chips of varying functionality. Given the global development of electronic devices and power systems, overall demand for power management ICs (PMIC) is still relatively good. PMICs are used in consumer electronics, communications, computing, industrial control, automotive and other fields. In 2H22, supply and demand gradually diverged and demand for automotive Switching Regulators, Multi Channel PMICs was strongest.

According to TrendForce, there are various specifications and types of PMICs, including Linear Regulators, etc. Even usage scenario dependent products such as Battery Charging & Management, Voltage References, and USB Power Delivery ICs all fall into this category.

Recent news suggests that TSMC isn't too interested in setting up a fab in Europe, but it appears there are other interested parties that are now courting the EU, namely a potential joint venture between GlobalFoundries and STMicroelectronics. The two companies are hoping to get a slice of the same cake as Intel, namely the European Chips Act, to help subsidise the cost of the proposed fab. Although GlobalFoundries are headquartered in New York and STMicroelectronics in Geneva, the latter being a French-Italian conglomerate, the planned location for the new fab will be somewhere in France.

It's highly unlikely that this will be a cutting edge or even a leading edge fab, as neither company is in the business of producing products in those market segments. ST makes a wide range of chips from MCUs and other types of microprocessors, to specialised memory products, a wide range of sensors, MEMS based devices and all kinds of electronics for electrical vehicles, as well as highly specialised components for the space industry. GloFo obviously stepped off the competitive foundry ladder some years ago and have been focusing on specialised processes and nodes since then, such as FD-SOI, a technology, something the two companies announced a joint partnership around earlier this year. As such, it's likely that this potential fab will focus on making parts needed for the automotive industry in Europe, among other things. There's still a long way to go and neither company has made any kind of official statement about the potential partnership as yet.

Global fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to increase 20% year-over-year (YOY) to an all-time high of US$109 billion in 2022, marking a third consecutive year of growth following a 42% surge in 2021, SEMI announced today in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. Fab equipment investment in 2023 is expected to remain strong.

"The global semiconductor equipment industry remains on track to cross the $100 billion threshold for the first time as shown in our latest update of the World Fab Forecast,"said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. "This historic milestone puts an exclamation point on the current run of unprecedented industry growth."

Foxconn's ambitions as a semiconductor player are growing with yet another potential joint venture being announced, this time in Malaysia. Hang on, Foxconn doesn't make semiconductors you might be thinking right now, but the company has actually owned semiconductor fabs since 2016, when it acquired Sharp and ended up with an 8-inch fab in Fukuyama in Japan. Foxconn has also tried to buy an 8-inch fab in Malaysia in 2020, as well as trying to take over Taiwanese non-volatile memory manufacturer Macronix at one point. It seems like the company has decided to take a different route this year, with news of a joint venture in India and now plans of another joint venture with Dagang NeXchange Berhad (DNex) in Malaysia.

The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), although it's a subsidiary of Foxconn, Big Innovation Holding Limited (BIH) that actually signed the paperwork. The MOU is about building a 12-inch fab according to Focus Taiwan/CNA which reports that the fab will be making chips using 40 to 28 nm processes. It's possible that this will be for the various EV projects that Foxconn is involved with and it would be a less risky way to enter the semiconductor market for Foxconn. The fab is said to be able to output 40,000 wafers a month once it starts, although when this will be is anyone's guess at the moment. Foxconn's focus is on what the company calls the 3 plus 3 initiative, which relates to electrical vehicles, robotics and healthcare solutions, which are built in AI, semiconductors and communication technologies, all presumably from within Foxconn. Time will tell if Foxconn manages to pull this off, but until the construction of the fab has started, this is nothing more than a potential project for Foxconn.

Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) have finalized a formal agreement to jointly invest in the first phase of the Fab 7 (Y7) manufacturing facility at Kioxia's industry-leading Yokkaichi Plant in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. With construction of the first phase of Y7 completed, the joint-venture investment will enable initial production output beginning in the fall of this year. This marks another important milestone in the 20-year strategic joint-venture partnership between the two companies.

"We are very pleased to further deepen our strategic partnership with Western Digital through this joint investment in Y7," said Nobuo Hayasaka, President and CEO of Kioxia. "The rapid digitization of societies underpins accelerating use of memory products. We will continue to leverage our technological partnership and economies of scale to develop and produce cutting-edge semiconductor products and achieve organic corporate growth."

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today held a groundbreaking ceremony for its state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication facility (Fab2) at its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. Utilizing AI-based cutting-edge manufacturing, the new facility will contribute towards possible expansion of production of its proprietary 3D flash memory BiCS FLASH at the Kitakami Plant. Construction of the Fab2 facility is scheduled to be completed in 2023. The Fab2 facility will have an earthquake-absorbing structure and environmentally friendly design that utilizes advanced energy saving manufacturing equipment and renewable energy sources. In addition, an administration building will be constructed to accommodate the control management and technical departments in response to the increased staff.

"As a leader in memory, this Fab2 facility will become Kioxia's key manufacturing hub to produce our memory products at scale. We are planning to introduce automated in-facility transfers and advanced production control to make Fab2 a truly world-class smart fabrication facility," said Nobuo Hayasaka, President and CEO, Kioxia. "Fab2 will be able to intelligently coordinate and optimize its production with Fab1 at Kitakami Plant as well as our fabs in the Yokkaichi Plant, enabling the company to seize opportunities in the growing memory market in a timely manner." Under its mission of uplifting the world with memory, Kioxia is focused on developing initiatives to strengthen the competitiveness of its memory and SSD business, which it has developed over the past 35 years since inventing NAND flash memory in 1987. Kioxia remains committed to creating consistent and sustainable growth through timely capital investments that meet growing market demand.

As we've known for a few months now, Intel is looking at setting up shop, or should that be fab, somewhere in Europe. The company already has fabs in Ireland, but now it looks like its second destination will be Magdeburg in Germany, at least if a story by MDR in Germany is to be trusted. The news outlet claims that the official announcement will take place sometime next week. It's not clear what kind of fab it'll be at this point in time, but hopefully we'll get more details once Intel makes an official announcement.

Magdeburg was apparently not the only location scouted by Intel in Germany, as Dresden was also in the running, the home of the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology among several other Fraunhofer Societies based in the city. Dresden also has twice the population of Magdeburg, which makes Intel's choice somewhat peculiar, as Magdeburg doesn't appear to have any particularly stand-out features that would make it the ideal choice of a semiconductor fab or even a packaging facility. It's possible that Intel chose the location based on the local supply chain, but that's just speculation at this point.

At Intel's 2022 Investor Meeting, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger and Intel's business leaders outlined key elements of the company's strategy and path for long-term growth. Intel's long-term plans will capitalize on transformative growth during an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors. Among the presentations, Intel announced product roadmaps across its major business units and key execution milestones, including: Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics, Intel Foundry Services, Software and Advanced Technology, Network and Edge, Technology Development, More: For more from Intel's Investor Meeting 2022, including the presentations and news, please visit the Intel Newsroom and Intel.com's Investor Meeting site.

According to an article by DigiTimes, which kind of states the obvious, the foundry industry isn't likely to change much over the next few years, as the cost of building a cutting edge foundry keeps increasing, which means the competition isn't likely to catch up with the market leaders. The costs mentioned are estimates, but seem quite likely and explains why there's so little competition in the foundry business.

It's unclear if the costs have been inflation adjusted or not, but a 90 nm 12-inch fab that could output 50,000 wafers a month, is said to have cost US$2.4 billion to build when it was the cutting edge node. Once things moved on to 28 nm, the equivalent fab would've cost US$6 billion, whereas a cutting edge 5 nm fab today, comes in at as much as US$16 billion. These are obviously long term investments, as even today, 90 nm nodes are used for plenty of chips, but most of the nodes above 28 nm are today used for specialty products rather than commonly used ICs, unless we're talking about 8-bit microcontrollers or some simpler components which companies such as TSMC and Samsung wouldn't even bother making.

The semicondustor market in 3Q21 is red hot with total revenue of the global top 10 IC design (fabless) companies reaching US$33.7 billion or 45% growth YoY, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In addition to the Taiwanese companies MediaTek, Novatek, and Realtek already on the list, Himax comes in at number ten, bringing the total number of Taiwanese companies on the top 10 list to 4.

Qualcomm has been buoyed by continuing robust demand for 5G mobile phones form major mobile phone manufacturers with further revenue growth from its processor and radio frequency front end (RFFE) departments. Qualcomm's IoT department benefited from strong demand in the consumer electronics, edge networking, and industrial sectors, posting revenue growth of 66% YoY, highest among Qualcomm departments. In turn, this drove Qualcomm's total 3Q21 revenue to US$7.7 billion, 56% growth YoY, and ranking first in the world.

A fight over who can announce the most new chip related investments seem to have broken out between Intel and TSMC, which both companies said to be eyeing Germany for their new foundry expansions. This is despite both companies having said that Europe isn't a particularly interesting market for new foundries, but it appears that the upcoming European Chips Act has changed their minds, despite there being no official word on how much the EU will invest.

Intel has already pledged investments in Europe of up to €80 billion, for as many as eight new foundries. It's not clear if this includes its current investments in Ireland or now, where Intel has already invested over €6 billion over the past couple of years. TSMC on the other hand hasn't promised anything as yet, but the company is in early talks with the German government according to news out of Taiwan. Time will tell if anything comes from this, but Intel is said to be making an announcement soon, possibly before the holiday season on where it's planning on building its next Fab in Europe, with Italy and France also being on the table.

Remember that rumour from last week about TSMC potentially building a fab in Japan and partnering up with Sony? Well, the deal is on and the fab is set to start construction in 2022, with production expected to start sometime in 2024. However, as mentioned, the fab isn't going to be using any cutting edge technology when it comes to the process node, since it's intended for imaging sensors and EV components.

The new fab is said to focus on 28 and 22 nm nodes, according to Tim Culpan, who writes for Bloomberg and who has been reporting on TSMC for at least the last decade. This is backed up by the Nikkei that reports that the US$7 billion fab will make chips in the 20-nm range, without going into further details beyond mentioning these nodes are over a decade old. That said, there are still plenty of products made on older nodes than that, as not everything has to be built on a cutting edge node and many components wouldn't benefit from a smaller node. Regardless, this fab won't help with the current shortage of components, but will hopefully lead to better availability of certain components in the future.

There doesn't seem to be a single month where rumours about new TSMC plants around the world are popping up and this time around it looks like there might be a joint venture with Sony in Japan. According to the Nikkei, the Japanese government is likely to be involved and might foot as much as half of the US$7 billion bill.

Another much more unknown player, Japanese auto parts maker Denso is also said to be a potential participant in the new fab. Denso is said to supply Toyota among others and with a shift towards more EVs, this might not be such a strange move. The new fab is expected to be located in Kumamoto Prefecture on land owned by Sony. It should be noted that Sony already manufactures image sensors here and the factory was hit badly by a large earthquake back in 2016, which led to a global shortage of certain image sensors.

In an interview with the BBC, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said that the company is no longer considering the UK as a site for a chip fab, due to Brexit, something the company had apparently done prior to Brexit. Now the company is looking for a location in another EU country for a US$95 billion investment for a new semiconductor plant, as well as upgrades to its current plants in Ireland.

Although Intel had not made any firm decisions on a site location prior to Brexit, Gelsinger is quoted as saying "I have no idea whether we would have had a superior site from the UK, but we now have about 70 proposals for sites across Europe from maybe 10 different countries." He continues "We're hopeful that we'll get to agreement on a site, as well as support from the EU... before the end of this year."

Finally some good news from the semiconductor industry, Infineon has announced the opening of its new €1.6 billion, 300 mm, or 12-inch wafer semiconductor factory. That said, we're somewhat confused with the press release, as it states that "the chips are manufactured on 300-millimeter thin wafers, which at 40 micrometers are thinner than a human hair" and that Infineon is a "global pioneer in 300-millimeter thin-wafer technology". This is why you need someone to proofread press releases before distributing them.

Anyhow, back on topic. The fab has nearly 60,000 square meters of gross floor space and production will be ramped up over the next four to five years, so it's not going to alleviate the current chip shortage any time soon. The fab is located in Villach, Austria and has taken three years to build. The first wafers produced in the fab are said to be leaving it this week and although Infineon didn't specify what chips they'll end up as, the fab is set up to initially cater for the automotive industry, data centers and the renewable energy industry.

In view of the ongoing production capacity shortage in the semiconductor industry and the resultant price hike of chips, revenue of the top 10 IC design companies for 2Q21 reached US$29.8 billion, a 60.8% YoY increase, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, Taiwanese companies put up remarkable performances during this period, with both MediaTek and Novatek posting YoY growths of more than 95%. AMD, on the other hand, experienced a nearly 100% YoY revenue growth, the highest among the top 10.

TrendForce indicates that the ranking of the top five companies for 2Q21 remained unchanged from the previous quarter, although there were major changes in the 6th to 10th spots. More specifically, after finalizing its acquisition of Inphi, Marvell experienced a major revenue growth and leapfrogged Xilinx and Realtek in the rankings from 9th place in 1Q21 to 7th place in 2Q21.

According to Nikkei, TSMC is set to start building a new fab in Kaohsiung, which is Taiwan's third largest city and located in the south of the island. It's also where ASE Technology Holding is located, which is the world's largest chip packaging and testing contractor. So far, TSMC doesn't have any fabs this far south in Taiwan, but it's not without its challenges.

The new fab is said to be designed to build chips on TSMC's 6 and 7 nm nodes, which are currently their most popular nodes, although this is likely to change as their 5 nm node begins to ramp up production. That said, there will still continue to be a huge demand for 6 and 7 nm parts, as these nodes transition to become mainstream production nodes.

For most people, a tool is something you hold in your hand: pliers, hammer, screwdriver. Inside an Intel chip factory, a tool is a whole different deal. Fab tools are huge and hugely costly and take entire teams to muscle into place and install. As Intel aggressively ramps its worldwide manufacturing footprint, a construction milestone recently passed at Intel's Ronler Acres factory in Hillsboro, Oregon.

At the company's massive $3 billion Mod3 factory expansion, the first tool rolled in. The honor went to a thin film deposition tool. It arrived not in a leather tool belt, but aboard two semitractor-trailers. Once completed and hooked up, it will weigh 10 tons. And by the time the Mod3 project is done in about six months, the thin film deposition tool will be joined by more than a dozen like it. A typical Intel fab, once built out, is stuffed with about 1,200 chipmaking tools, many of them costing millions of dollars apiece.

TSMC is under pressure from the U.S. to reconsider its plans to expand its facilities in mainland China, sources close to the matter told DigiTimes. TSMC currently operates a fab near Shanghai, and one in Nanjing, which it had originally planned to expand, meeting resistance from the U.S. It is not known if this is government (diplomatic) pressure or by U.S. based customers of TSMC., but is likely a combination of the two. The same forces were possibly behind getting TSMC to invest north of $3.5 billion toward a facility in Arizona with six more "Gigafabs" being planned in the southwestern state. U.S. hand-holding in TSMC's policymaking could be part of a strategy to deny cutting-edge silicon fabrication technology to China (PRC), and to help TSMC expand its manufacturing in safer regions as the security situation across the Taiwan strait continues to deteriorate. TSMC, specifically western tech companies' dependence on it, makes it a soft target on the island, and a bargaining chip to deter western military intervention.

Micron Technology, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Lehi, Utah, fab to Texas Instruments. The economic value for Micron from the sale is $1.5 billion, comprised of $900 million in cash from TI from the sales transaction, and approximately $600 million in value from select tools and other assets. Micron has sold some of these assets and will retain the remainder to redeploy to its other manufacturing sites or sell to other buyers.

Micron's Lehi, Utah, facility has been home to a highly skilled team with expertise in all aspects of advanced semiconductor manufacturing. TI will offer all Lehi site team members the opportunity to become employees upon the closing of the sale and intends to deploy its own technologies at the site. The sale is anticipated to close later this calendar year.

"Micron's Lehi, Utah, facility has a strong history of technology innovation and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing," said Micron President and CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Texas Instruments as it is an industry leader and truly values the talented Lehi team and the capabilities this site offers to deploy its technology effectively. We are greatly appreciative of the contributions that the Lehi team has made to Micron, as well as the collaboration and engagement Micron has had with the local community."

Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX), a leading aerospace and defense technology company, and GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ), the global leader in feature-rich semiconductor manufacturing, will collaborate to develop and commercialize a new gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-on-Si) semiconductor that will enable game-changing radio frequency performance for 5G and 6G mobile and wireless infrastructure applications.

Under the agreement, Raytheon Technologies will license its proprietary gallium nitride on silicon technology and technical expertise to GF, which will develop the new semiconductor at its Fab 9 facility in Burlington, Vermont. Gallium nitride is a unique material used to build high-performance semiconductors that can handle significant heat and power levels. This makes it ideal to handle 5G and 6G wireless signals, which require higher performance levels than legacy wireless systems.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 1H20 seemed at first poised to devastate the IC design industry. However, as WFH and distance education became the norm, TrendForce finds that the demand for notebook computers and networking products also spiked in response, in turn driving manufacturers to massively ramp up their procurement activities for components. Fabless IC design companies that supply such components therefore benefitted greatly from manufacturers' procurement demand, and the IC design industry underwent tremendous growth in 2020. In particular, the top three IC design companies (Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Nvidia) all posted YoY increases in their revenues, with Nvidia registering the most impressive growth, at a staggering 52.2% increase YoY, the highest among the top 10 companies.