| | | I was reviewing reports on semie's KPIs, here are my notes, can be useful for someone:
Terms Recognition:
- IC - integrated circuits, new way of printing billions of resistors on a surface of semiconductor
- wafer - thin layer of silicon used for fabrication of IC
- Technology node - specific semiconductor manufacturing process and its design rules
- Process nodes: 32 nm, 22 nm, 14 nm; and microns: 0.10 micron to 0.13 micron, etc.
Concepts:
Development:
- R&D
- Design
- Manufacturing
- Assembling, Test, Packaging
- End Use
Segments:
- Fabrication - process of manufacturing chips, comprises semies fabrication plants, knows as foundries/wafer labs. They manufacture wafers and IC by wafer processing, wafer fabrication and front-end manufacturing
- Breadline & ICs Semiconductors - comprises from IDMs(Integrated Device Manufacturers). IDMs design, manufacture, test & assemble ICs. Due to complexity, many manufacturers are outsourcing different stages for optimized production(everyone besides Intel). Usually those who focused on R&D() outsource IC manufactures
- Other Semies Services - those that don't fit into larger view of semi industry. Include: testing, packaging. OSAT Vendors (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test).
- Semies Equipment - equipment for manufacturing semies
- Memory, Storage & Peripheral - my boy SIMO; DAO/memory used for diff computers. Primary volatile & non-volatile memory(DRAM, RAM, SRAM, NAND)
Business Model:
- Fabrication - SF earn revenue from manufacturing wafers of different diameters(1, 12 inch, and projected to create 18 inch)
- Capacities of SF are monitored to asses wafer prices. Prices vary depending on technology of node used
- Revenue consists from total sales of wafers +mask manufacturing, computer-aided services? and licensing.
- Approaches for Wafer Revenue:
- Wafer Diameter/Capacity - revenue computed by a)shipment units × ASP(Average selling price). Shipment is calculated by b)capacity × utilization rate
- Technology Node - revenue computed by a) X nm(technology node) + Y nm(technology node). Shipment and ASP used for deriving the specific node revenue. Total shipment × ASP
- Breadline & ICs -
- Other Semies Services -
- Semies Equipment - most important metric is shipment unit and ASP
- Memory, Storage & Peripheral:
- Memory chips - shipments(in bits) × ASP. Shipment may be estimated by growth rates. It is commodity market, therefore businesses have low pricing power
- Storage devices - sum of revenue from HDD and other(NAND, Cloud Solutions). HDD shipment × ASP
Obviously but necessary - in-house manufacturers require higher CapEx, while fables simply outsource its chip production(still heavy in R&D)
- Good comparison metric is EV/Sales and EV/FCF and inventory-turnover
- Companies with less expensive facilities tend to get better economics due to less depreciation expenses, which are higher than in other sectors
Quote:
- NAND memory is used for data storage—for instance, for the operating system, user data, and input and output. In 2030, NAND demand will likely be driven by dedicated data servers for video and multimodel data. This data will require substantial storage (for example, for training on high-resolution video sequences and retrieving data during inference). We expect the total NAND demand to be two to eight million wafers, corresponding to one to five fabs. Given that the performance requirement for NAND storage of gen AI will be the same as in current servers, fulfilling this demand will be less challenging compared to logic and DRAM.
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