VLSI Research

Critical subsystems for the IC equipment market continued to grow to a new record of $11 billion in 2018. While 2019 is expected to be a downturn year, the long-term outlook remains unchanged with an average growth rate of 3 percent. Last year may have been a new high for revenues, but it will be remembered as a year of two parts: record quarterly revenues in Q1, followed by rapidly falling orders in Q3 and Q4. Normally, this would not be a problem as suppliers are used to managing volatility in their businesses. However, encouraged by solid end market drivers and optimistic customers, the timing of this downturn was particularly bad as it coincided with the addition of significant new manufacturing capacity for critical subsystems that will be needed to supply the industry into the next decade. The resulting step change in costs against the backdrop of falling revenues has put strain on the financials of these suppliers. Although current visibility is poor, the order decline appears to be stabilising and the worst is nearly over. Revenues are expected to recover in the second half of 2019 followed by a promising outlook for the following three years. Critical Subsystems for IC equipment history and forecast to 2022. After a pause in 2019, the trend is expected to continue to reach new industry records. Suppliers of subsystems used in vacuum process tools, such as deposition and etch, have benefited the most from critical subsystems growth since 2012. Vacuum intensity of semiconductor processing continues to grow and in 2018 the value of vacuum process tools exceeded the value of non-vacuum process tools for the first time. This trend is expected to continue with vacuum based semiconductor process equipment accounting for over 60 percent of wafer fab equipment revenues by 2023. In summary, 2019 is expected to be down 10 percent to 20 percent as the industry digests the recent large additions to semiconductor manufacturing capacity, followed by a new cycle starting in 2020.Julian West is a technical and marketing analyst at VLSI Research Europe.

This year, SEMI ISS covered it all – from a high-level semiconductor market and global geopolitical overview down to the neuro morphic and quantum level. Here are key takeaways from the Day 1 keynote and Economic Trends and Market Perspectives presentations.In the opening keynote, Anne Kelleher from Intel pointed to the huge growth of data, with fabs collecting more than 5 billion sensor data points each day. The challenge, Kelleher noted, is to turn massive amounts of data into valuable information. Moore’s law is not dead. New models of computing benefit still from Moore’s law and advances in Si/CMOS technologies for conventional, deep learning, neuro morphic and quantum computing.With customers expecting continual improvements in applications, the question is whether the chip industry is moving fast enough to meet these expectations, Kelleher said. A broad supply chain, equipment and materials innovations, and attracting the “best of the best” college graduates to fuel innovation is key, she said.In the economic trends session, Nicholas Burns (ambassador ret.) from Harvard University pointed out that we will see a major shift in power. The U.S. will remain the major world power over the next 10 years, but we will see a major shift in power in the next coming decades as the gap with countries like China, Russia and India continues to narrow.Duncan Meldrum from Hilltop Economics said that we are passing the peak growth of economic cycle. He warns that a more likely outlook is that a global growth recession is developing. Although semiconductor MSI growth will see a noticeable slowdown in 2019 and 2020, the semiconductor industry is still healthy over the longer term.Bob Johnson from Gartner sees demand shifting from consumer to commercial applications with higher ROIs and budgets. AI, IoT and 5D are the major enablers. He sees structural changes in the semiconductor industry especially for memory but also for Moore’s law with increasing costs and fewer players.The DRAM markets shows volatility and NAND market may be negative in 2019 but non-memory are expected to accelerate mainly because of increasing content and some price hikes.Overall Gartner expects good long-term growth with a CAGR (2017 to 2022) of 5.1%, outpacing 2011 to 2016 CAGR of 2.6%. After a strong 2018 with 13.4% revenue, he forecasts a slower 2019 with 2.6% growth followed by a 8% growth in 2020 and negative growth rate in 2021.Andrea Lati of VLSI went “Back to fundamentals” in his presentation about the industry. VLSI sees a downside bias due to slowing global economy, tariffs, and trade wars. Future drivers are data economy, cloud, AI and automotive.As memory leads the 2019 slowdown, analog, power, logic and other sectors remain in positive territory. VLSI lowered its semiconductor equipment forecast for 2018 from 20% (Jan. 2018) to 14% (Dec. 2018) but increased its sales outlook from 8% to 15% in 2018. VLSI expects revenue to slow into the first half of 2019 but increase to over 4% in the second half of the year, resulting in total 2019 drop of 2.7%. Semiconductor equipment sales are expected to drop from 14% in 2018 to -10% in 2019.Michael Corbett of Linz Consulting, covering wafer fab materials in the years of 3D scaling, sees these as good times for the industry. His outlook for wafer fab materials is bullish based on strong MSI and because wafer fab materials suppliers are getting bigger because of M As.In the Market Perspective session, Sujeet Chand of Rockwell Automation pointed out that as more and more data is generated, the problem is how to get value of all the data collected. There is a need to create the right architecture for machine learning and AI and big data is increasingly being replaced by contextual/structured data. He expects Industry 4.0 to drive foundries to become smaller, more flexible and more productive.In the Technology and Manufacturing session, Aki Sekiguchi of TEL addressed process challenges in the age of co-optimization. The semiconductor industry continues to expand, driven by massive growth of interconnected devices, with heavy demand for processing power and storage. He expects an exponential increase of data from about 40ZB in 2018 to 50ZB in 2020 to 163 ZB in 2026.Major technologies such as DRAM, 3D NAND and logic are dealing with scaling challenges. The density of DRAM (Mb/chip) is plateauing according to 2015 to 2020 trend data, with DRAM is in need of EUV. Memory capacity demand is leading to increasing layers and higher aspect ratios that is concern for 3D NAND and mainly for plasma etch. With Logic already implementing 3D structures, it appears to be in a solid position. Buddy Nicoson of Micron talked about his 50 years in the industry and looked ahead to the next 50. The anchors – quality, cost, scale and speed – won’t change. It has been a great journey so far with unprecedented opportunities and challenges ahead of us. We are getting into a convergence (specialization, integration) and solution-based phase. We will see some inflection points in the coming years, with the best yet to come.Christian G. Dieseldorff is senior principal analyst in the Industry Research and Analysis group at SEMI in Milpitas, California.

Orders for critical subsystems evaporated in the second half of 2018 after a very strong start to the year. Subsystems suppliers have been left with depleted order books after OEMs accumulated large inventories as the market for wafer fab equipment cooled off. Although overall critical subsystems revenue growth for 2018 is forecast to come in at +5% YoY, this year has been a tale of two halves with a bumpy ride for the critical subsystems supply chain along the way.The year started very strongly with overstretched OEMs switching from a “just in time” ordering strategy to panic buying and over ordering critical subsystems “just in case” as they battled to keep up with equipment demand from chipmakers. However, falling memory prices and technology push outs from major chipmakers in Q2 saw a sharp reduction in capex and demand for equipment. The whiplash effect through the supply chain has been severe and critical subsystems suppliers running at full capacity were unable to stop fast enough.Comparing inventories of vacuum processing OEMs (major consumers of advanced critical subsystems) and critical subsystems suppliers, warning signs for subsystems suppliers were apparent after the Q2 quarterly earnings reports. After OEM inventories surged in Q2, critical subsystems supplier inventories spiked in Q3. The overproduction of subsystems leading to this spike suggests that the OEMs had been promising orders to subsystems suppliers but turned off the buying as they too struggled to shift their own products earlier in the year. Suppliers of highly customised subsystems such as vacuum valves and power supplies were particularly badly hit. Whereas other subsystems such as vacuum pumps, which can generally be repurposed on other tools or applications, have fared better as the oversupply can be consumed by a wider variety of applications.The bad news does not appear to be finished for subsystems suppliers as Q3 OEM inventories as a percentage of revenue remained at historically high levels, which is a concern in the short term. Nevertheless, the underlying drivers for the industry remain strong and there is light at the end of the tunnel as major fab building projects in Asia appear to be continuing without delay – a promising sign that chipmakers are still intending to increase capacity. There will be a lot of empty fab shells and upgraded clean rooms ready for equipment installations at short notice if required, ensuring that orders for equipment and subsystems will pick up again soon. Although 2018 will appear in the historical data as a flat, if not slightly positive year, it does not quite reflect the bumpy ride that has been experienced by the supply chain along the way.For more information about VLSI Research and Critical Subsystems, visit www.vlsiresearch.com/public/csubs/. Julian West is a technical and market analyst at VLSI Research Europe.