Monday, February 24, 2003
Most types of wafer fab producing CMOS circuits saw their second consecutive quarter of declining utilization at the end of 2002 according to a report from Semiconductor International Capacity Statistics, Vessem, The Netherlands.
The average for all MOS fabs went from 87.3% in the second quarter of 2002, through 86.5% in the third quarter and down to 81.9% utilization in the fourth quarter.
The foundry fabs are scoring lower utilization figures than the independent device manufacturers according to Semiconductor International Capacity Statistics, dropping nearly 10% in each quarter, from 79.9% to 71.3% to 61.6% in the fourth quarter of 2002.
But at the leading-edge for MOS foundries able to manufacture circuits with minimum geometries of less than 0.2-micron the situation is more or less flat at around 90% utilization. The quarterly figures through the year were 90.6%, 93.7%, 93.0%, 89.6% from the first quarter through the fourth.
Although with the slope trending downwards it implies that manufacturers will be under pressure to cut prices, it could take only a small rise in demand to drive utilization up close to 100%, at which point prices would start to increase.
SICAS, the Semiconductor International Capacity Statistics, was jointly founded by the European Electronic Component Manufacturers Association (EECA), the Electronic Industries Association of Japan (EIAJ, now JEITA), the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA) and the US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA) also sponsors SICAS.
By: DocMemory
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