U.S. considers compulsory measures to obtain chip supply data

On Thursday (23rd) Eastern Time, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that the Biden administration is considering invoking the Cold War-era national security law to force semiconductor supply chain companies to provide chip inventory and sales data.

Raimondo said in an interview on Thursday that the move is intended to ease chip supply bottlenecks - which have stalled U.S. auto production and caused shortages of consumer electronics - and to identify possible chip hoarding.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Raimondo

For months, Raymondo's team has been trying to figure out how companies allocate semiconductor supplies. But several previous chip-themed meetings have not improved industry transparency, and many companies have refused to submit business data to the government.

The U.S. Department of Commerce now requires relevant companies to fill out a questionnaire within 45 days and provide chip supply chain information. This request is voluntary, but Raimondo said she warned industry representatives that if they do not respond, she may invoke the Defense Production Act or other tools to force them to submit.

"I told them, 'I don't want to take any coercive measures, but if they don't comply, then I have no choice,'" Raimondo said. "I said today that we are evaluating all the options and all the tools at hand. I don't want to get to that point, but we need to see some progress and we do need (them) to comply."

It was unclear how Raimondo would use the Defense Production Act, or DPA Title III, to gain information from chipmakers or their customers, and she did not identify any specific companies.

U.S. officials have repeatedly stressed that the private sector must step up and provide more transparency if the U.S. government is to successfully address the chip shortage, a point that was reiterated at a White House conference on chips on Thursday.

Raimondo said the meeting "went very well" and the participants were "very constructive."

According to Cailianshe, a research report by CICC pointed out that the global semiconductor industry is expected to continue to shift to mainland China, and China is expected to build 8 high-capacity wafer fabs from 2021 to 2022.

The research report also stated that the current proportion of domestic equipment procurement is still at a relatively low level (accounting for 7% of the total procurement in 2020), and there is broad room for the development of domestic equipment in the future. The product lines of domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers are gradually improving, and they are gradually making breakthroughs in their respective advantages.

Data shows that the localization rate of degumming equipment has reached more than 90%, the localization rate of cleaning equipment, heat treatment equipment, and etching equipment is about 20%, and the localization rate of PVD equipment and CMP is 10%. In addition, a zero breakthrough has been achieved in lithography machines, ion implantation machines, and measurement equipment, and great progress has been made in testing equipment.

According to data previously released by SEMI, global semiconductor equipment shipments in the second quarter of 2021 increased by 48% year-on-year to a record high of US$24.9 billion, up 5% from the previous quarter. Semiconductor equipment shipments in mainland China ranked first in the world, up 38% from the first quarter and 79% from the same period last year to US$8.22 billion.

September 24th news, South Korean media reported on Thursday that Samsung Electronics is in talks with Tesla to produce Tesla's next-generation autonomous driving chips based on Samsung's 7nm process.

Citing informed sources, the Korea Economic Daily reported that Tesla and Samsung have discussed chip designs and exchanged prototypes of the chip several times since the beginning of this year. The chip will be used in Tesla's upcoming Hardware 4 self-driving computer.

Samsung declined to comment. Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

If Samsung wins the order, it is expected to use its 7-nanometer production line to manufacture Tesla's chips, the report said. Samsung is currently producing chips for Tesla's current-generation Hardware 3 self-driving computer.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at Tesla's AI Day event in August that Tesla will introduce new hardware for the self-driving computer on the Cybertruck electric pickup truck in about "a year or so."

SK Group reportedly plans to invest 700 billion won (about 3.822 billion yuan) in its silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor wafer business to become the world's leading edge materials market by 2025.

According to businesskorea, SK Group's holding company recently stated that it will invest 5.1 trillion won in cutting-edge materials by 2025. Of this, 700 billion won will be used for SiC wafers.

It is reported that SK Group is paying close attention to the SiC power semiconductor market for electric vehicles. SK Group predicts that by 2025, the utilization rate of SiC semiconductors for electric vehicles will increase from the current 30% to more than 60%, and the SiC wafer market size will expand from US$218 million in 2021 to US$811 million.

Faced with this market with huge potential, SK Group plans to increase its SiC wafer production capacity from 30,000 pieces this year to 600,000 pieces in 2025, and increase its global market share from 5% to 26%. The company expects sales of its SiC wafer business to reach 30 billion won in 2021, and plans to increase sales to 500 billion won by 2025.