This switched micro-channel public number Deeptech deep technology’s “Ask the core Voice”, Author: Yu Hui even
It has been almost a week since the outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan caused the policy to close the city. The chip industry has begun to focus on the operations and shipments of the three major wafer fabs in Yangtze River Storage, Wuhan Xinxin, and Wuhan Hongxin. Did they disrupt plant operations due to the outbreak? Can the chip be shipped out of Wuhan to a downstream packaging factory and then shipped to the client?
Under the epidemic, Yangtze River Storage and Wuhan Xinxin have been affected by the current situation and corresponding measures, which have affected the supply of 3D NAND, NOR Flash and CIS, the three most in-stock chips in the world.
What’s more, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Western Digital, and Kaixia are all watching the latest situation in Wuhan and the Yangtze River storage.
Long deposit, Wuxin apply for special permission to maintain normal shipments
According to the information obtained by Voice of Voice, Yangtze River Storage and Wuhan Xinxin have maintained the normal shipment of chips through a specially declared pipeline procedure under the epidemic closure of Wuhan . At the same time, the company did respond, there is no stoppage at all, and logistics has not stopped.
Furthermore, Wuhan Hongxin is currently waiting for the machine to enter the factory, so there are no shipping issues.
Only between the first quarter and the second quarter of 2020, Wuhan Hongxin is in the peak period of moving into the equipment. Now the equipment that has entered the factory is mainly lithography machines, and other equipment is expected to be in March. Later in place, when the machine enters the field, installation and inspection procedures will be carried out, and then intensive research and development.
In addition, Wuhan Hongxin CEOBefore the Chinese Lunar Calendar this year, Jiang Shangyi had just made a low-level visit to the headquarter of the leading lithography machine manufacturer ASML in the Netherlands. It is speculated that it would be intensive to start afterwards, and ASML would need to help on the equipment.
However, this epidemic situation will affect the delivery schedule of Wuhan Hongxin’s equipment in the future? Which in turn affects the timing of R & D and production? All need to further observe the development of the epidemic.
Wuhan Hongxin responded that everything is as usual. During the Spring Festival, people from all departments will contact each other every day to confirm their health status before reporting.
Foreign roll call: Micron, Western Digital profit?
Since it has been almost a week since Wuhan closed the city, some foreign analysts have begun to issue related reports, but most of them are speculative.
U.S.-based foreign analysts point out that the closure of Wuhan ’s virus may lead to the closure of local wafer fabs or supply disruptions, which will “hit hard” local wafer fabs and directly point out that “China ’s capacity decline may US companies bring more positives. ” Therefore, they believe that the two US-based storage plants of Micron and Western Digital will be the biggest winners of the pneumonia closure in Wuhan.
Photo: Micron’s official website
In fact, anyone familiar with the operation of semiconductor factories will know that wafer fabs are non-stop for 365 days, and there will be no shutdowns or closures due to the Lunar New Year holidays. Only annual repairs will be performed once a year (or longer). To suspend some machinery and equipment.
If it is in a tight capacity situation, it will delay the annual repairs to increase production. Therefore, some wafer fabs do not have fixed annual repairs.
Furthermore, general fabs will not perform annual repairs during the period when capacity starts to climb. New factories like Yangtze River Storage are currently in the stage of climbing 3D NAND chip capacity.
There are only a few situations, that is, when there is no order in the fab and the capacity utilization rate is too low, the fab will consider the shutdown. Or, the price of memory chips DRAM and NAND Flash is already lower than the production cost. The more you make, the more you will lose. At this time, production will be reduced. However, once the wafer factory is shut down, it will take a lot of time to resume work.
There are two cases of cold shutdown and warm shutdown for general fab shutdowns:
cold shutdown is like an old repair. Only a few days of downtime will be 1 ~ 2 weeks; but warm shutdown is different. This means that water and electricity are cut off. It may take a month or even longer to restart the machine. Warm shutdown is usually performed when wafer fabs reduce production.
Since the closure of Wuhan on January 23, the factories of Changjiang Storage and Wuhan Xinxin are still operating normally without any shutdown.
Therefore, it is reported that some American analysts said that the wafer fab of Yangtze River Storage was closed or interrupted. Some chipmakers joked that “the analyst should be invited to take a look at Wuhan in person immediately, it will Know the real situation. “
Although the 3D NAND chips produced by Yangtze River Storage, and the NOR Flash and CIS chips produced by Wuhan Xinxin have been successfully shipped through special application channels, the epidemic situation is still under observation and will continue to be observed in the future. face the challenge.
Hidden worries: shortage of work, supply of raw materials
The biggest challenge that Wuhan’s fabs will face next is the problem of resuming work. Some employees of Yangtze River Storage and Wuhan Xinxin have temporarily lost their jobs after the Spring Festival due to the closure of the city.Law returned to the post as scheduled, which may temporarily cause a labor gap.
Next is the transportation of raw materials and the support of equipment manufacturers. A general wafer fab will have several months of raw material inventory, which can be temporarily supported, or you can let the raw materials come in by referring to a special application, but this is still to be closely observed.
Furthermore, large-scale wafer fabs usually have equipment vendors to set up bases or send resident engineers to cooperate with fab customers to solve problems on the production line anytime, anywhere. Because the semiconductor machine is very precise, it is by no means that after the equipment is shipped into the factory, the supplier and the customer are in a silver guise and “respect each other.”
However, this time the Wuhan epidemic has already been reported. Japanese equipment maker Tokyo Willicone TEL has started to evacuate local Japanese employees. This situation should occur in most equipment factories and may slightly affect Wuhan. The fab operation process.
The “psychological warfare” of memory chips seduce the face of human gamblers
Changjiang Memory is a 3D NAND rookie. With the current production capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 pieces, it is actually impossible to control the supply and demand of the global 3D NAND chip market. But why did foreign companies directly name Micron and Western Digital to benefit from the Wuhan epidemic?
Because memory chips are an industry with extremely sensitive supply and demand, price fluctuations are driven by two forces:
First, even a 1% to 3% increase or decrease in supply and demand or an imbalance will affect storage price fluctuations.
Second, the storage industry is an industry that attaches great importance to “psychological warfare.” The entry of Yangtze River Storage is the “thorn” in the minds of many competitors.
The effects of this “psychological warfare” will be reflected in the “capital market evaluation of the industry” and “price fluctuations”. Once the price fluctuations, it will affect the downstream distributors Purchasing behavior.
If the price may be expected to rise temporarily due to an event, even if this event is not a real reversal of supply and demand, downstream factories will enter the market to grab the goods. This is why the storage industry has been full for many years. Speculative color, because it truly reflects the human gambling side. The price fluctuates violently, which thoroughly stimulates the gambler-like thrill of human nature.
The current storage industry is in a very special position. Because before the outbreak of Wuhan, 3D NAND was in very tight supply.
First, in the past two years, the price of 3D NAND has fallen to the point where the upstream supplier has a financial deficit, so it has to reduce production and slow down the expansion of new production capacity.
Furthermore, the demand for CIS sensors has exploded in 2019. The manufacturing process of CIS and memory chips is similar. Some semiconductor factories have begun to use storage capacity to produce CIS chips. For various reasons, DRAM and NAND Flash chips have changed from “oversupply” to “Supply is in short supply”, and the industry believes that 2020 will be a good year for memory chips.
This time when encountering the epidemic in Wuhan, many people think that this wave of epidemic is not sure how long it will last. Even if it does not affect the shipment now, the next few months may make the local fab slow down in all aspects. It is reasonable to say that it will make new NAND Flash storage more tight.
Furthermore, Wuhan Xinxin is also one of the suppliers of NOR Flash. In 2019, the chip was exploded by the demand for TWS headsets, resulting in a substantial increase in demand.
For example, a pair of TWS earphones needs two NOR Flash chips, from 16M, 32M to 128M, and even 256M capacity will be used to make NOR Flash “absent” in 2019. This boom should continue until 2020 year.
But at the same time, don’t ignore a problem-China is a major consumer of memory chips and various consumer electronics products. The spread of this epidemic may lead to a substantial slowdown in demand.
Therefore, this period will be the decrease in the supply of memory chips (or a kind of expected psychology) and the shock period brought by the cooling of demand. How will the opposing forces of the two sides develop? Wall Street ’s Investors may be more concerned about this.
But the long-term trend will not change.
From the rise of the Yangtze River storage, whether it is technology change or production capacity in place, customers have a long history. The impact of the epidemic and closure may slow the progress for a short time, but it will not change the fundamentals. In other words, this difficult process will be deeply remembered in history, but it will not reverse the development of history.