Samsung and UMC cooperate to increase ISP and related panel driver ICs

The chip shortage problem is stimulating the transformation of the entire semiconductor industry. The media has reported that Samsung and UMC partnered to cooperate with foundry chips to increase production capacity.

UMC is also a well-known chip foundry in the industry, but its scale is naturally not comparable to TSMC, but Samsung is now helping UMC to increase its investment.

The media reported that UMC’s planned capital expenditure for this year is $1.5 billion, and Samsung directly purchased 400 machines to be placed in the UMC plant to produce wafers.

“새로운 카테고리의 올인원 디바이스 ‘갤럭시 북(Galaxy Book)’ 국내 출시” by Samsung Newsroom is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The total value of these 400 machines may have exceeded the total capital expenditure planned by UMC this year. Samsung’s large-scale effort is mainly used to alleviate its own capacity problems.

Supply chain sources said that Samsung purchased 400 machines this time to mature the process, and the wafers produced by UMC using these machines will be packaged by Samsung.

Specifically, these machines are placed in UMC’s P6 plant at Nanke, and are mainly used to produce CIS sensing components and display driver ICs for OLED and LED.

The choice to cooperate with UMC is mainly due to UMC’s strong strength in the 28-nanometer high-voltage process, especially the market share of UMC in display driver chips.

For this reason, UMC will also postpone the R&D and investment in advanced processes and focus on mature processes to alleviate the shortage of display driver chips, which will not be low for UMC.

However, this may not have much positive impact on the entire industry. Display panels have already started to increase in price and Samsung’s investment has only supplied chips for itself.

At that time, the shipment of Samsung series panels is bound to increase significantly. Of course, prices will definitely increase, and the price increase of consumer electronics seems to be inevitable.