Wafer Prices Rising by Up to 40% in 2021: Report

[btarunr]

Semiconductor foundries across the board are preparing to raise price quotes of their 8-inch wafers from 2021. A DigiTimes report sheds light on various foundry companies, including UMC (United Microelectronics), Global Foundries, and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) have raised their 8-inch foundry quotes by 10-15% in Q4-2020, with the quotes set to rise by another 20-40% in 2021. Foundries don't tend to use flat pricing, and instead rely on quotes specific to the size and design requirements of an order (by a fabless chip designer).

The foundry industry operates broadly on silicon fabrication nodes and wafer sizes. This article by Telescope Magazine provides insights into the typical use-cases for each wafer size. Although pertaining strictly to pricing of 8-inch (200 mm) wafers, an impending price-rise across the semiconductor industry can be extrapolated on the basis on significant labor cost increases. TSMC is planning to implement a 20% pay hike for its personnel in 2021.



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[Khonjel]

If you thought 2020 was expensive wait till 2021 happens lol.

 

[mak1skav]

Just pray that your old hardware keeps working, at least that's what I am doing lol.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Cartel agreement? Where is free market competition? Why capitalism didn't work?

 

[londiste]

Aren't most of cutting edge processes using 300mm wafers?
450mm wafers are being planned or ramped up. This might play a part in prices of smaller wafers.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

450mm wafers plans have long history around 15-16 years before from today. But where is it?

 

[Fourstaff]

Cartel agreement? Where is free market competition? Why capitalism didn't work?

What you are seeing now is capitalism at work. Its up the regulators to break if there is a cartel arrangement.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Cartel agreement? Where is free market competition? Why capitalism didn't work?

Wdym didn't work?

Companies don't exist to please you or me with cheaper and better products. They exist to make money and surely seems like they do, and "better and cheaper products" part is coincidental to it. If people give it to them even without it being the case...

 

[neatfeatguy]

Consumers: Look at all this great hardware coming out! They can't keep up with rapid demands though....so many haven't got their CPU or GPU :-(

 

[Vya Domus]

People still don't want to accept that prices are actually set by volume not "competition". The more volume you ship the more headroom exists to increase prices, all of this work and stay home business had created a nice environment for more products to be sold hence the price hikes.

Cartel agreement? Where is free market competition?

Depends, price fixing isn't always beneficial to all parties involved. If I sell 100 000 wafers but then someone else sells 1 million I may not be that happy to rise the prices because that may cause my customers to switch to the other supplier which even though has the same prices generates more volume and is therefore considered more reliable.

 

[XiGMAKiD]

TSMC is planning to implement a 20% pay hike for its personnel in 2021.

Dayum

 

[mechtech]

Said it before and I’ll say it again

Toss a coin to your foundry..........

 

[TumbleGeorge]

DMS to wafer manufacturers? Yes they exist to make money but not with breaking ruls...But if the regulators corupt? When money are too much part of them maybe found way to right pockets?

 

[kapone32]

To be as objective as possible. Since 2000 we have been marching down the road of tech (in everything). Covid has had a tremendous impact and one of those is that the PC market has gone Nuclear. I like that TSMC is giving back to it's employee's though.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

To be as objective as possible. Since 2000 we have been marching down the road of tech (in everything). Covid has had a tremendous impact and one of those is that the PC market has gone Nuclear. I like that TSMC is giving back to it's employee's though.

Covid has impact not only to PC market but on all business which works is not possible from home office. Governments paying part of costs and losses include percent of salaries. But not all countries give away free money to everyone (or mostly) of it's citizens like USA. This is socialism.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Why capitalism didn't work?

It worked. That's why you have computers.

 

[claes]

It worked. That's why you have computers.

Keyword here is past-tense

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Keyword here is past-tense

True. Most of the state of the art tech stuff is designed by socialist states these days. /s

 

[Gruffalo.Soldier]

So benefits for fab owners, not so much for those paying to get their chips made. Incidentally do Intel own their own?

 

[claes]

True. Most of the state of the art tech stuff is designed by socialist states these days. /s

To even suggest that it is possible for socialist states to actually exist demonstrates a misunderstanding of value and production in modern economic theory, and how that relates to theories of the state, and bears no relevance to cost increases and the questions of demand raised in this thread, or by the nature of production costs going up in this particular industry, but nice pwn n00b /s

 

[RandallFlagg]

So benefits for fab owners, not so much for those paying to get their chips made. Incidentally do Intel own their own?

That's what I'm sitting here thinking. Price hikes from the foundries will pass right through the design houses like Nvidia, AMD, and Apple to the consumer. This is basically TSMC/GloFlo/Samsung etc using the high demand for their foundries to make more money. There's no reason not to, choices really only exist on the bigger 65nm+ nodes where there are a lot of foundries, but they are not competitive in the SoC / GPU / APU / CPU space. This is happening even with demand from many Chinese design houses evaporating due to restrictions, so demand for the top foundries must be enormous.

This could be the once predicted inflection point where the smaller nodes become unviable economically. Prices will go up until demand drops.

14nm forever baby!

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Before chips and integrated circuits also exist electrical computers but not before John Vincent Atanasoff. He was a half Bulgarian.

 

[evernessince]

It worked. That's why you have computers.

The US Army financed the first computer (ENIAC) and many other projects by other parts of the government (ARAPNET, the forerunner of the internet).

So no, it's not capitalism you thank, it's democratic socialism. If it weren't for regulatory bodies stepping in on multiple occasions you would still would be running dial up over your bell monopoly phone line and Intel, monitor manufacturers, and RAM manufacturers would either still be maintaining a monopoly or fixing prices.

If there's one thing I thank, it's that no 1st world country is dumb enough to implement capitalism without a significant mix of other types of government and economic systems to cover it's glaring flaws.

 

[R-T-B]

Cartel agreement? Where is free market competition? Why capitalism didn't work?

It has nothing to do with "capitalism didn't work." It's more like "we're in the middle of a global pandemic and production is down, demand is up."

The US Army financed the first computer (ENIAC)

The Antikythera mechanism would like a word with you.

 

[RandallFlagg]

The US Army financed the first computer (ENIAC) and many other projects by other parts of the government (ARAPNET, the forerunner of the internet).

So no, it's not capitalism you thank, it's democratic socialism. If it weren't for regulatory bodies stepping in on multiple occasions you would still would be running dial up over your bell monopoly phone line and Intel, monitor manufacturers, and RAM manufacturers would either still be maintaining a monopoly or fixing prices.

If there's one thing I thank, it's that no 1st world country is dumb enough to implement capitalism without a significant mix of other types of government and economic systems to cover it's glaring flaws.

Two guys in a garage made Apple.

A Chemist and a Physicist founded Intel.

AMD was founded by some pissed off Fairchild Semi employees.

Amazon was some software engineers working out of a dingy office in a red light district. They were afraid Sears was going to crush them in courts. Might want to watch this video from 1999 for perspective.

From the video, Bezos in his office in 1999: