Price of Silicon Wafer Continues to Soar

Megalith

Megalith

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SUMCO, a Japanese silicon wafer manufacturer, which it says caters for two thirds of the world’s wafer market, is reporting a 20% increase in the price of silicon wafers compared with the same time last year. That’s not all; they’re also looking to raise the price by another 20% next year, and by an undisclosed amount in 2019, too.

Memory industries are continuing to announce their plans for extending their production facilities. SUMCO is estimating that the global demand in 2020 will be 6.6 million units per month. On the other hand, silicon wafer industries are limiting themselves from making extensions of their facilities, as the price of silicon wafer can fall once they increase their amount of supplies.
 
Exercate said:
Sounds like there's no competition for them.
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Shin-Etsu Chemical, but they are not expanding quickly enough. SUMCO is noticing DRAM prices and wants a piece of the pie, as Mr. Creosote would enjoy.
MrCreosote.jpgmrcreosote.png
 
So no offense now... but couldn't you just put all this "price of raw material for solar panel" articles all be linked in one topic? I mean I know this board as a whole fucking hates the technology almost as much as it shows hatred towards Apple, but damn Megalith.
 
sfsuphysics said:
So no offense now... but couldn't you just put all this "price of raw material for solar panel" articles all be linked in one topic? I mean I know this board as a whole fucking hates the technology almost as much as it shows hatred towards Apple, but damn Megalith.
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Oh that's right; silicon is only used in solar. All the integrated circuits in my electronics are composed of peanut butter.
 
won't be long before most will need to take out a long term loan to be able to afford a decent gaming PC

Where's the industry at regarding the Moore's Law effect?
 
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_l_ said:
won't be long before most will need to take out a long term loan to be able to afford a decent gaming PC
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Financing computers used to be pretty common in the 90s and probably earlier.
 
i wonder how much the cost of the wafers really effects anything. they can print quite a few a chip
 
blkt said:
Oh that's right; silicon is only used in solar. All the integrated circuits in my electronics are composed of peanut butter.
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His point is they're all interconnected, but Megalith is missing this obvious connection.

Who knew, as silicon fabs got more and more fine in their dimensions, the silicon required to feed them had to be higher and higher grade? This seems pretty damn obvious :rolleyes:

Unfortunately, I don't think complaining will do anything, since he never reads the responses to his threads anyway.
 
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defaultluser said:
His point is they're all interconnected, but Megalith is missing this obvious connection.
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Megalith isn't missing anything. This article focuses on manufacturers SUMCO (they exited the solar market in 2012), Shin-Etsu Chemical and SK Siltron. They are limiting growth of their facilities despite demand, also influenced by the market price of DRAM, so they can raise prices. This is also happening because of how much they were hurt in 2008, so they are protecting themselves against a future financial crisis. The article focus is obviously on semiconductor business.

The other deals with solar panels and the shutdown of many partially refined silicon factories in China due to environmental concern. This along with problems with international trade (tariffs) preventing import of raw materials and the overall timing of things raised prices. They are related but not the same and deserve separation.
 
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blkt said:
Oh that's right; silicon is only used in solar. All the integrated circuits in my electronics are composed of peanut butter.
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You're right, I saw "soar" in the thread topic, and my brain instinctively put an 'L' in there because I just finished reading the solar thread. My bad.
 
The cost of making a CPU vs what we pay for them are worlds apart, I would hope they would absorb some of the cost. Wouldn't count on it in Intel world though.

I would think GPU's would be more affected given the size of the die's and complexity / failure rates.
 
is the market ripe for a technical break thru in CPU design? I wonder what it will be? Last I read Moore's Law is no longer in vogue. An article I read said: "Intel will slow the pace at which it rolls out new chip-making technology and is still searching for a successor to silicon transistors." which, if true (and I see no reason it would not be) it can account for the rollback in silicon production
 
There is a hypothesis that all the dredging of sand off shore for semiconductors and construction is what is causing shore line erosion and loss in certain areas, as opposed to selective ocean levels rising because of global warming.

Just a hypothesis, don't get too worked up.
 
This is serious shit by the way. Many places that use the wafers are actually signing 5 year contracts already with a year paid in advance.
 
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