SEMI FabView: Fab Investment Multi-Year Growth Spree Expected to Continue in 2019

Global fab construction investment will see another strong year based on our latest outlook to 2019. SEMI analysts expect 9 percent growth for fab equipment spending in 2018 and 5 percent in 2019. Fully 82 future facilities/lines with various probabilities are scheduled to start volume production in 2018 or later. This year Samsung will invest about US$14 billion in fab equipment, down from US$17 billion in 2017. China (including non-Chinese headquartered companies) will begin to ramp up to US$11 billion in 2018, rising to US$18 billion in 2019. For a fuller picture of projected fab investments, please see related World Fab Forecast article.

Fab investment is just one indicator of how growing demand in areas such as from Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud/data storage, automotive and Internet of Things (IoT) is driving unprecedented spending in the semiconductor industry. Below are a few highlights* of recent SEMI FabView insights:

• Intel plans to invest US$5 billion in Israel
  Intel plans to invest in production expansion at its Kiryat Gat plant in southern Israel. Work is expected to start in 2018 with wafer size and technology conversions to be completed in 2020.

• Intel EUV-ready Fab in Arizona
  The fab retrofit began in the first half of 2017 and we have updated our forecast for investment size, equipment move-in, operation start, and the volume production capacity schedules for 2019 in SEMI FabView.
• TSMC’s new R&D Center in Hsinchu, Taiwan
  A new TSMC research and development (R&D) center project is expected to start no sooner than the latter half of 2019. The center will support future technology development and transfer within TSMC, with the most advanced technology development to come in late 2020 or early 2021.

• Samsung’s new fab plan in Pyeongtaek, S. Korea
  Samsung plans to build another fab in Pyeongtaek. Initially listed in the SEMI FabView November 2017 edition, the investment is huge with construction starting in 2018. SEMI analysts estimate that Samsung will start production of DRAM at this site to meet increased market demand.
• Fab closure by ADI
  ADI plans to close its Milpitas, California (Silicon Valley) lab, the smallest of the four fabs it acquired from Linear Technology in March 2017, within the next few years.
• Bosch 300mm Fab in Dresden, Germany
  We pushed out the construction start of Bosch’s planned 300mm fab in Dresden. Bosch announced new investments in new 300mm infrastructure at the site, with fab construction expected to account for less than a third of the total investment. Detailed estimates for equipment move-in, ramp up and pass production schedules are available in SEMI FabView.

SEMI FabView, a mobile-friendly, interactive version of SEMI’s popular World Fab Forecast, delivers on-demand fab information such as fab spending and capacity for over 1,100 facilities, including over 82 planned facilities worldwide, across a wide range of product segments including Power, GPU, Memory, Foundry, MEMS and Sensors fabs. Fab data include region, start of construction, operation, construction and equipment spending, capacity, wafer sizes, product types and geometries. SEMI FabView subscribers receive forecast model updates through SEMI’s World Fab Database.  Click here for a trial to experience SEMI FabView first hand.

*Actual updates provide more detail