Top trends for 2022 - what can we expect?

The foundry industry welcomes the arrival of 3nm process technology courtesy of TSMC’s FinFET and Samsung’s GAA technologies As semiconductor manufacturing processes gradually approach physical limits, chip development must now turn to either “changes in transistor architecture” or “breakthroughs in back-end packaging technology or materials” in order to achieve faster performances, reduced power consumption, and smaller footprints. After incorporating EUV lithography at the 7nm node in 2018, the semiconductor industry will welcome yet another revolutionary process technology in 2022 – the 3nm node. More specifically, TSMC and Samsung are expected to announce their respective 3nm process technologies in 2H22. While the former will continue to adopt the FinFET architecture that it has been using since the 1Xnm node, Samsung will for the first time utilize its own implementation of GAAFET, called MBCFET (multi-bridge channel field-effect transistor) for its 3nm process technology. In contrast with the FinFET architecture, in which the gate makes contact with the source/drain channel on three sides, the GAAFET architecture consists of a gate that surrounds the nanowire or nanosheet channel on four sides, thus increasing the surface area of contact. The GAAFET design significantly reduces leakage currents by giving the gate a greater degree of control over the channel. Regarding possible applications, the first batch of products mass produced at the 3nm node in 2H22 is expected to primarily be HPC and smartphone chips since these products place a relatively high demand on performance, power consumption, and chip compactness. While DDR5 products gradually enter mass production, NAND Flash stacking technology will advance past 200 layers The three dominant DRAM suppliers (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) will not only gradually kick off mass production of next-gen DDR5 products, but also continue to increase the penetration rate of LPDDR5 in the smartphone market in response to demand for 5G smartphones. With memory speed in excess of 4800Mbps, DDR5 DRAM can massively improve computing performances via their fast speed and low power consumption. As Intel releases its new CPUs that support DDR5 memory, with Alder Lake for the PC segment, followed by Eagle Stream for the server segment, DDR5 is expected to account for about 10-15% of DRAM suppliers’ total bit output by the end of 2022. Regarding process technologies, Samsung and SK hynix will kick off mass production of 1 alpha nm products manufactured with EUV lithography. These products’ market shares will likely increase on a quarterly basis next year. Turning to NAND Flash products, their stacking technologies have yet to reach a bottleneck. Hence, after 176L products entered mass production in 2021, suppliers will continue to migrate towards 200L and above in 2022, although these upcoming products’ chip densities will remain at 512Gb/1Tb. Regarding storage interfaces, the market share of PCIe Gen4 SSDs will likely skyrocket in the consumer PC segment next year. In the server segment, as Intel Eagle Stream CPUs, which support PCIe Gen 5, enter mass production, the enterprise SSD market will also see the release of products that support this interface. Compared to the previous generation, PCIe Gen 5 features double the data transfer rate at 32GT/s and an expanded storage capacity for mainstream products at 4/8TB in order to meet the HPC demand of servers and data centers. Additionally, the release of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs is expected to quickly raise the average data storage capacity per server unit. Regarding the server market, flexible pricing schemes and diverse services offered by CSPs have directly propelled the cloud service demand of enterprises in the past two years. From the perspective of the server supply chain, the predominant business model has gradually transformed from traditional server brands to ODM Direct, meaning that traditional server brands will see fundamental, structural changes, such as providing colocation servers or full-service cloud migration support, in their business models. This shift also means that enterprise clients will come to rely on more flexible pricing schemes and diverse risk mitigation measures in response to an uncertain global environment. In particular, while the pandemic accelerated changes in work and everyday life in 2020, hyperscalers are expected to account for nearly 50% of total demand for servers in 2022. In addition, the growth in ODM Direct server shipment is expected to surpass 10% YoY as well. The third-generation semiconductor industry will move towards 8-inch wafers and new packaging technologies while expanding in production capacity The gradual phasing out of ICE vehicles by various governments across the 2025-2050 period is set to both accelerate the pace of EV sales and increase the penetration rate of SiC and GaN devices/modules. Energy transition activities worldwide as well as the rapid growth of telecom applications such as 5G technology have also led to a persistent bull market for third-generation semiconductors, resulting in strong sales of SiC and Si substrates. However, as current efforts in substrate production and development are relatively limited, suppliers are able to ensure a steady yield of SiC and GaN substrates only by manufacturing them with 6-inch wafers. Such a limitation has, in turn, led to a long-term shortage in foundries’ and IDMs’ production capacities. In response to this quandary, substrate suppliers, including Cree, II-VI, and Qromis, are now planning to not only expand their production capacities in 2022, but also migrate their SiC and GaN production to 8-inch wafers, in hopes that these plans will gradually alleviate the prevailing shortage in the third-generation semiconductor market. On the other hand, foundries such as TSMC and VIS are attempting to shift to 8-inch wafer fabrication for GaN on Si technology, while major IDM Infineon is releasing products based on the latest CoolSiC MOSFET, delivering trench designs that enable significant power efficiency for semiconductor devices. Finally, telecommunication component provider Qorvo has also released a new GaN MMIC copper flip chip packaging architecture for military applications.

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