Global Semiconductor Wafer Fab Capacity Forecast and Trends
TapTechNews June 19. The Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) announced the latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report yesterday local time. The report believes that the global semiconductor wafer fab capacity will achieve a year-on-year growth of 6% and 7% respectively in 2024 and 2025, and will set a historical new high of 33.7 million 8-inch wafer equivalents per month in 2025.
From the perspective of production areas, Mainland China will be the main driving force for the global capacity increase in the past two years: Hua Hong, ChipON, Xin En, SMIC, and ChangXin Memory are all investing heavily to increase capacity.
Specifically in terms of values, the overall capacity of mainland China's wafer fabs will increase by 14% year-on-year to 8.85 million wafer equivalents per month this year, and this value will increase by another 15% to 10.1 million wafer equivalents per month in 2025, accounting for about 1/3 of the industry as a whole.
The capacity increase of other major production areas in the past two years is limited, as sorted out by TapTechNews:
Taiwan, China South Korea Japan America Europe and Middle East Southeast Asia 2025 Capacity 5.805 5.40 4.70 3.20 2.70 1.80 2025 Year-on-year Increase 4% 7% 3% 5% 4% 4%By sector, the logic semiconductor foundry capacity will achieve a 10% and 11% increase in 2024-2025 under the promotion of Intel and the capacity expansion of Chinese enterprises, and will reach 12.7 million wafer equivalents per month in 2026.
Among them, the capacity increase of 5nm and below advanced processes will be better than that of the overall logic semiconductors, reaching 13% and 17% respectively, which is mainly affected by the demand for generative AI chips and the entry into the mass production stage of the 2nm GAA process.
As the HBM memory for AI servers shifts from 8-layer stacking to 12 or even 16-layer stacking, the demand for related DRAM dies is continuously increasing;
The rise of edge AI applications drives the memory capacity of mainstream smartphones from 8GB to 12GB;
In addition, laptops equipped with AI assistants also need to be equipped with at least 16GB DRAM memory.
These various factors have prompted DRAM manufacturers to increase relevant investments, and the DRAM capacity increase in 2024 and 2025 will both reach 9%.
The SEMI believes that the recovery of the 3D NAND flash memory market is still slow, there will be no capacity increase in the NAND field this year and only a 5% increase next year.
SEMI President and CEO Ajit Manocha said:
From cloud computing to edge devices, the surge in AI processing is driving a race to develop high-performance chips and is promoting a strong expansion of global semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.
This creates a virtuous cycle: AI will drive the growth of semiconductor content in various application areas, and this in turn will encourage further investment.