Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Semiconductors Simplified
An investor guide to the Semi supply chain
“Semiconductors Simplified” is a primer for investors new to the semiconductor
supply chain.
Technology - Semiconductors
Gokul Hariharan
5
The first part of this guide explains the basics of semiconductors, typical process
flow in semiconductor wafer fabrication and packaging, and important primary
concepts such as Moore’s Law. It also discusses some of the new buzzwords in
the semiconductor industry, such as 3D IC stacking and FinFETs.
AC
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J.P. Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Limited
Rahul Chadha
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J.P. Morgan Securities (Taiwan) Limited
The second part illustrates in detail how value flows through various parts of the
semiconductor manufacturing supply chain (fabless, foundries, back-end
packaging and testing, etc.). It also touches upon how different vendors of the
supply chain are starting to move into each other's turf.
JJ Park
5
5
J.P. Morgan Securities (Far East) Ltd, Seoul
Branch
Technology supply chain – where do semiconductors sit?
Semiconductor Food chain – “Upstream”
Raw material
suppliers
Foundries
SPE vendors
OSAT/component
Chip inventory
draw-down
Hardware part –“ Downstream”
System makers
Channel
distributors
Component
inventory
draw-down
Channel inventory
draw-down
End demand
Source: J.P. Morgan.
Semiconductor supply chain – block diagram
Source: AMD.
See page 16 for analyst certification and important disclosures, including non-US analyst disclosures.
J.P. Morgan does and seeks to do business with companies covered in its research reports. As a result, users should be aware that
the firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this report.
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
Gokul Hariharan
5
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Semiconductors simplified
The following sections are a step by us to simplify the world of semiconductors for
global investors, with an aim to illustrate various jargon and processes used in the
semiconductor industry, and derive possible analogies to real world processes.
What is a semiconductor?
In the field of electricity, a material is classified into three categories – conductors,
insulators and semiconductors, based on the resistance they provide for the passage
of current through them.
Conductors are highly conductive material, offering minimum resistance to the flow
of current. Typical examples of conductors are metals such as gold, copper and
platinum. Insulators, on the other hand, offer very high resistance levels thus making
it nearly impossible for current to pass through them. Examples here include
materials like plastics and rubber. Semiconductors, as the name suggests, have
their conductivity in between that of conductors and insulators.
Why are semiconductors so important?
Engineers try to design an apt blend of conductors, semiconductors, and insulators to
precisely control the flow of current through the circuit. Put it simply, the required
functionality can be derived from an electronic circuit, if the passage of current can
be controlled through it. Hence, the "semi-conductive" nature of semiconductors
makes them apt for any circuit design.
Transistors – the building block of the IC (Integrated Circuit)
As DNA is the basic building block of genes in a human body, transistors are the
building blocks of any semiconductor circuit. Let’s try to look at transistor as a
“power switch”, which lets the current to flow through it when it is in "on" state,
while no current can pass through it when it's in "off" state – illustrating their ability
to switch roles between conductors and insulators. In a digital design, this can be
used to represent binary code of 1s and 0s - the basics of any digital design.
Figure 1: A Packaged Integrated Circuit
Figure 2: A PC Motherboard
Source: Microchip.
Source: Intel Corp, http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktopmotherboards/motherboards.html.
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
When engineers integrate many of these transistors into any design circuit, it is
known as “integrated circuit or integration of many transistors on a circuit”.
IC fabrication – the pizza analogy
If we were to look at the pizza making process, the chef usually starts with a circular
pizza base, tops it up with the desired topping, bakes it and finally cuts it into
required number of slices. We can draw a close analogy of this process to
semiconductor manufacturing.
Once the circuit design is firmed up, transistors are typically printed on a silicon
wafer in the desired pattern. To do this, raw wafers (pizza dough) are taken through a
step of processes called photolithography and deposition which results is materials
being deposited and circuits being built on the raw wafer (pizza being baked). We are
not going into the details of these wafer fabrication steps – the lead time for which is
usually 2+ months.
These silicon wafers are then sliced into small rectangular pieces, generally known as
dies, dependent on how many transistors should be present on every die. Dies are
then mounted on a plastic or ceramic base.
Once the dies are mounted, electrical connections are made between the transistors
and are extended outside the die – to enable plug-in to an outer circuit board. This
process is known as wire bonding. Advanced ICs would need to move from “wires”
to smaller “balls" or new techniques like Flipchip. Finally, the whole die, with the
interconnections etc, is packaged in a wear-resistant material, which will protect the
bare die and wire-bonded interconnects through the lifecycle of the IC.
Figure 3: Semiconductor supply chain – block diagram
Source: AMD.
Semiconductor manufacturing
Figure 4 below illustrates the various steps in a semiconductor chip manufacture. The
chip designers, located at the apex of this chain, are engaged in designing and
qualifying their chips by various system makers (PC/Handset/TV) for their adoption
in respective end-products. This process is widely termed as securing a “design win”
in the semiconductor industry. Chip designers are generally classified as fabless or
IDM (integrated device manufacturers).
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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11 June 2013
Gokul Hariharan
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Figure 4: Technology supply chain
Semiconductor Food chain –
“Upstream”
Raw material
suppliers
Foundries
SPE vendors
Hardware part –“ Downstream”
OSAT/component
Chip inventory
draw-down
System makers
Channel
distributors
Component
inventory
draw-down
Channel inventory
draw-down
End demand
Source: J.P. Morgan.
IDMs typically design and manufacture chips in-house, where as fabless companies
only “design in-house”, however, outsource the manufacturing process to contract
manufacturers, known as pure-play foundries.
While the IDM model worked well in 1990s, the past decade has seen dynamic
market-share gains by fabless majors against IDMs. We attribute this industry
development to two major factors.
First, given in-house manufacturing by IDMs, maintaining decent utilization rates
during a demand down-cycle was difficult, which impacted their profitability due to
significant fixed costs. Second, given the capital intensive nature of the
semiconductor industry and dynamic product cycle, prudent timing of capex
allocation by IDMs became difficult.
Given outsourced manufacturing model by fabless majors, they were shielded from
both the above mentioned factors. Moreover, growth of fabless model worked in
favor of foundries, as they were able to maintain decent utilization rates, even during
downturns, due to a diversified customer mix. In addition to this, prudent capex
allocations were possible based on proactive capacity allocation & tech advancement
discussions in accordance with customer needs.
What happens post a design win?
Once the chip-designer secures a design win, they proceed with the manufacturing of
the chip, either in-house (IDM model) or via foundries.
Based on customer’s IC design, foundries fabricate chips by first etching transistors
on a silicon wafer followed by slicing them into rectangular shaped “dies”. These
dies then undergo backend packaging and test procedures and are finally converted to
“integrated circuits” chips (IC chips).
Once ready, these IC chips are assembled into handsets/PC/consumer electronics
devices at various EMS vendors (electronics manufacturing services vendors like
Hon-Hai) into final products, and shipped to various channel distributors across the
globe.
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provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
Gokul Hariharan
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
What happens at fabless, foundry and OSAT vendors ?
Chip-design
Typically ICs are classified into two major sub-categories – ASIC (Application
specific integrated circuits), and ASSP (application specific standard products).
ASIC are typically developed and customized for an exclusive customers, while
ASSP are customized for a specific product, but can be adopted by various customers
given standard specifications.
Example for ASIC include application processor manufactured by SEC for Apple's
iPhone, while commodity DRAM (for PC) falls in the category of ASSPs.
Once designs are finalized, these are send to Foundries for wafer fabrication.
Foundry wafer fabrication
As mentioned earlier, foundries specialize in etching layers of transistors on a silicon
wafer. The etching process is a combination of first coating the wafer with photoresist layer, and then exposing it to an optical lithography tool. Once etched, various
transistors are connected together thru metal interconnects and undergo a series of
chemical processes.
In the following chart, these processes are roughly divided into 3 sections:
Front end, middle and back end of the line operations (note that this back end is still
at Foundry level and is different from traditional terminology on back-end applied to
assembly and test operations).
Very simply, the Front End of the Line (FEOL) process consists primarily of
transistor formation, which requires multiple steps of preparing the wafer for
transistor fabrication, growing different regions of the transistor, implanting new
material on the silicon oxide, lithography steps for forming the transistors and
etching away excess material.
The Back-end of the Line (BEOL) process consists primarily of forming
interconnects among existing circuit layers formed during the FEOL stage and
involves a lot of deposition processes since metal (like aluminum or copper) needs to
be deposited to form the interconnects between different circuit elements. In this
stage, dielectric material is also used to create insulation layers between different
metal interconnects.
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Figure 5: Semiconductor Manufacturing – Frontend wafer processing explained
Source: AMD.
Once the wafer processing part is finished, the wafer is probed for any defects,
followed by slicing it into rectangular dies; which are then packaged and tested – all
these combined being termed as the backend steps of the fabrication process.
Figure 6: Semiconductor Manufacturing – Backend explained
Source: AMD.
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provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Gokul Hariharan
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Figure 7: Semiconductor process flow – Front end and back end process
BT resin
Substratebased
Silicon wafer
Wafer probing
(sorting)
Oxidation layering
Dicing
Packaging
Final test
Backendprocess
Coating
(photo-resisit)
Exposure
(lithography)
Developing
& baking
Etching
Ion implanting
Leadframebased
Chemical
vapor
deposition (CVD)
Ashing
(CMP)
CMP
slurry
DUV
Front-endprocess
Source: J.P. Morgan.
A step-by-step look at semiconductor manufacturing
process
There are usually eight steps of front-end processing, as discussed below:
1. Ingot – The near-100% purity silicon is first melted and perfect
silicon ‘seed’ crystal is lowered into it. The result is a long rod
(ingot) of single-crystal silicon with a diameter of usually 300
mm. Ingot formation could take a few days depending on the pull
rate (1-10mm/hour) and ingot length (could be up to 2-3m).
2. Saw and polish wafer – The ingot is accurately sawed into
bare wafers (substrates). The raw wafer is then polished and
cleaned to remove impurities and then a photo-resist coating is
applied on it.
3. Photolithography – This step involves creating repeating circuit
patterns onto the wafer by shining light through a stencil-like
“mask.”
4. Ion implantation – This step beams ions or impurities (dopants)
onto the wafer to add conductive properties to individual
transistors.
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provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
5. Etching – This step etches away unwanted silicon from the
wafer to prepare for gate formation.
6. Gate formation – This step deposits silicon dioxide layers,
adds dielectric layers, and forms metal gates over the wafer.
7. Metal deposition – This step deposits the wafer in copper
sulphate solution; copper ions create metal connections with
transistors.
8. Metal layers – This step creates the metal layers to
interconnect the transistors within the chip – sometimes
over 30 layers! This process also makes the bonding pads
that connect the chip itself to the package leads.
Source: Intel Corp.
This is followed by back-end processing, which essentially refers to the assembly,
test, and packaging of the final integrated circuit so that it can be connected to a
printed circuit board (PCB). The back-end processing involves various steps which
may take from a few days to a few weeks to complete depending on the complexity
of the circuit and the logistics involved. In the back-end operation, devices are then
assembled using four steps:
1. ‘Die preparation’ cuts the wafer into individual integrated circuits or dice.
2. ‘Die attach’ attaches the die to the support structure (e.g., the lead frame) of the
package.
3. ‘Bonding’ connects the circuit to the electrical contacts of the package, and so to
the outside world.
4. ‘Encapsulation’ (usually by plastic molding) gives the physical and chemical
protection to the circuit.
Source: NXP Corp.
We talked lithography – why is it so important?
Let's think of a conventional lithography process where in an image is printed on a
flat metal surface, followed by selective treatment to retain ink, while surrounding
areas are treated to repel the ink. Similarly, semiconductor lithography is used to
print transistors on a silicon wafer – termed as etching in semiconductor industry.
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Gokul Hariharan
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Typically, a foundry coats the wafer with a photo-resist material and exposes it to an
optical light beam, hence etching the required circuitry on the wafer.
This process is repeated over and over in a Fabrication process and is the most
important part of building integrated circuits on a wafer.
What does process migration (moving from 28nm to 20nm) actually mean?
Let’s think on how to increase die output per wafer? The answer is to print more
transistors per wafer.
Now, there are two possible methods to do this - 1) foundries increase the wafer size,
thus providing more area for printing, but this is not very viable as fabs &
lithography tools are designed for a particular wafer size. Wafer size migrations
typically happen once in 12-15 years. OR 2) technology advancements be made to
reduce the size of transistor to fit in more transistors on same wafer area.
The second option is usually adopted in the semiconductor industry and
essentially brings Moore's law into discussion.
What is Moore’s law?
Gordon Moore, founder of Intel, put forward an interesting observation that the
number of transistors on a chip usually doubles every two years.
Figure 8: Moore’s Law
Microprocessor Transistor Count, 1971-2012 & Moore's Law
10,000,000,000
Ivy Bridge Core i7
1,000,000,000
Sandy Bridge
Core 2 Duo
Core 2 Duo
100,000,000
Intel Xeon
Pentium M
Pentrium II
10,000,000
1,000,000
Pentrium IV
Pentrium
486
Pentrium III
386
286
100,000
8086
10,000
4004
8080
8008
1,000
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
Source: Intel Corp, http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/history-intel-chips-timeline-poster.html.
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Why is it so popular?
Let’s try to evaluate the performance and cost implications of this observation.
If the size of transistors is reduced, it speeds up the movement of electrons through
them – hence speed is enhanced, and secondly, there is less leakage of current, hence
power consumption profile is improved. More importantly, larger number of dies can
be produced from the same wafer given smaller transistor size. This essentially
translates in more die output per wafer, thus lowering the overall cost per IC. This
observation made by Gordon Moore seems to have held true over past many decades,
and is popularly known as "Moore's Law".
Sizes of transistors are generally measured in nanometers since the miniaturization
has reached such an extent that smallest feature sizes in modern day transistors are at
below 100nm size.
When TSMC claims that they are moving from 28nm to 20nm, they are essentially
shrinking the transistor size to smaller dimensions, hence "cramming" more
transistors per square inch area on the wafer. For example, in the move from 28nm to
20nm, the feature size shrinks by 30% or more, hence the area occupied by transistor
shrinks by almost half (since area is proportional to square of feature size). This
process migration, enabling more transistors for the same area of wafer is the essence
of Moore's law. The transistor scaling achieved by Moore’s law is also important to
drive the virtuous cycle of semiconductor growth: Better scaling gives better
performance (more transistors) or cost (cheaper transistors) , which drives market
growth, helping to drive new investment which can push transistor scaling and
Moore’s law even further.
Figure 9: The Moore’s Law Virtuous Cycle in semiconductors
Transistor
scaling
Better
Performance/
Cost
Investment
Market Growth
Source: ITRS More than Moore Paper, 2007
At present, leading foundries (such as TMSC) have 28nm under mass production
and are working on development of 20nm. But, at 20nm, size reduction curve for
transistors are expected to hit near-limit using current lithography tools. Hence, the
semiconductor industry is looking for alternatives on how to extend Moore's law into
future years - which has coined terms like "3D IC and FinFET" as new buzz
words.
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provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
Gokul Hariharan
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
3D IC & FinFET – new buzz words
Let’s take an example of a city with a constantly growing population base. In order to
provide housing to this growing population, new construction can be carried out on
the available land. But what if we exhaust all the available land though the
population keeps growing? A possible and viable solution to this problem could
be building skyscrapers instead of single storied houses.
Similar analogy can be applied to transistors on a silicon wafer. Given limiting size
reductions in transistors beyond 20nm, foundries and IDM are going for the
skyscraper mode of transistor fabrication – fabricating in 3D architecture compared
to planer 2D manufacturing previously. This mode of manufacturing has been termed
as "3D IC manufacturing" by Intel, while TSMC calls it "FinFET".
Figure 10: FinFET Transistor vs. Planar Transistor Structure
3D structure or the Fin,
Compared to the planar
structure in the diagram
on the left.
Source: Intel, Synopsys.
Packaging to go 3D as well
As on the front end, with increasing complexities in transistor fabrication, its related
packaging techniques has also underwent degree of sophistication over generations
of semiconductor devices. These days, a term synonymous with 3D IC/FinFET
fabrication has been 3D IC packaging.
As process geometries become smaller and smaller, developing enough bonding
space through conventional packaging techniques like wire bonding and even solder
bumping across the 2D planar structure becomes inefficient, since a 3D structure
result in two dies being stacked on top of each other thus reducing the length of
interconnection.
What’s 3D IC packaging?
3D IC packaging is an extension of scaling that semiconductor vendors have been
pushing as process migration leads to denser chips and smaller process geometries. It
has evolved through different stages , starting from Package on Package, Silicon in
Package, IC stacking with a silicon interposer and finally true 3D stacking or TSV
(thru silicon Via) as shown in the figure below. As illustrated in the following figures
from Amkor and TSMC respectively, a TSV arrangement can convert 3 separate
packages into a single package under a 2.5D or 3D arrangement, thus overcoming the
inefficiencies suffered by conventional packaging techniques as transistors goes 3D.
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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11 June 2013
Figure 11: Migration to 2.5D & 3D TSV packaging
Source: Company reports, Amkor.
Figure 12: TSV (COWOS) packaging vs. conventional
Source: TSMC.
Post our discussion on the technological aspects of the semiconductor industry, we
try to illustrate
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
How value flows across various steps of semiconductor contract
manufacturing (Fabless/Foundry / OSAT) food chain?

Vertical integration that starts to happen within this space.
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
Gokul Hariharan
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Value pyramid for semiconductor manufacturing chain
Figure 13: Semiconductor manufacturing – Value Pyramid
Fabless ASP =
Cost to ODM/
OEM/EMS
(US$/chip)
Fabless
Margins
IP Royality
Material COGS for
fabless - US$/chip
Testing Margins
Testing costs
Packaging Margins
Revenues for OSAT players =
value added during packaging
and testing
“Value added” pricing model
for OSAT
Packaging Materials + Substrate
Costs
Foundry Margins
Depreciation + Labor Costs
Silicon Wafer + Other Material costs
Foundry
ASP US$/Wafer
Fabless places
order to
foundry
Source: J.P. Morgan.
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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The four layers from device to Silicon –
lines are blurring
As shown in the Figure 14, we conceptualize Wafer Fabrication, Packaging/Test,
Substrate and PCB as the 4 degrees of separation between raw silicon and the device.
Foundry vendors sit at the first stage, doing wafer fabrication, and then moving it on
to the packaging vendors. Packaging vendors source substrates from standalone
substrate makers and send it back to Fabless vendors. ODM EMS vendors use PCBs
to assemble various integrated circuits to make a device.
In the past few years, the lines are blurring among these 4 players. As we illustrate
below,
 Foundries trying to forward integrate into packaging to capture some value from
OSAT players, through TSV and COWOS for advanced packaging.
 OSAT players trying to integrate material business to achieve leverage of inhouse component sourcing. They are also trying to develop System-In-package
solutions to capture more value from PCB vendors (moving board level assembly
into the package itself).
 Substrate vendors have always been engaged in PCBs as well (like Ibiden in
Japan) but more substrate vendors are also trying to get into PCB (Kinsus buying
Boardtek).
 Pure play PCB players are trying to integrate into substrate to maintain ASP amid
shrinking PCB content given rising sophistication in packaging
14
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provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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Asia Pacific Equity Research
11 June 2013
Figure 14: Semiconductor manufacturing chain
Semiconductor
manufacturing
chain
Foundry
OSAT – Packaging & Testing
ODM/EMS
/Brands
IC Design
Substrate
Move to System in Package
Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
Source: J.P. Morgan.
This material was originally prepared by a J.P. Morgan entity (as identified in the material) in connection with its business and is being
provided to you as a courtesy in a modified format only for informational and educational purposes (not investment purposes), and on
a delayed basis.
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Coverage Universe: Hariharan, Gokul: ASUSTek Computer (2357.TW), Acer Inc (2353.TW), Compal Electronics, Inc. (2324.TW),
Delta Electronics, Inc. (2308.TW), Foxconn Technology (2354.TW), Hon Hai Precision (2317.TW), Lenovo Group Limited (0992.HK),
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J.P. Morgan Global Equity Research Coverage
IB clients*
JPMS Equity Research Coverage
IB clients*
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(buy)
43%
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42%
74%
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38%
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57%
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