In another year, the white-hot semiconductor equipment industry set another sales record, benefiting from the seemingly overwhelming consumption boom. Although the United States has imposed stricter restrictions on the sale of advanced tools, the boom is expected to continue until 2022.

Driven by the surge in orders from Chinese chipmakers and the growing list of new and expanded fabs, the trade organization SEMI reported this week that orders for front-end fab equipment accounted for $88 billion in global sales in 2021. SEMI predicts that fab equipment sales alone may approach the $100 billion mark next year, and then gradually decrease in 2023.

SEMI President and CEO Ajit Manocha said: “We expect that continued investment in digital infrastructure construction and long-term trends across multiple end markets will drive healthy growth in 2022.” This growth trajectory is expected to continue into next year. The global semiconductor manufacturing equipment market is expected to expand to 114 billion U.S. dollars.

The industry organization reported that demand for IC equipment driven by leading and mature process nodes accounted for more than half of annual fab equipment sales, an annual increase of 50% to $49.3 billion.

The front-end fab equipment department includes wafer processing and support services as well as mask and marking devices.

Chip makers in China, South Korea and Taiwan once again fueled the buying frenzy of IC equipment as they scrambled to increase production capacity to solve the continuing chip shortage.

China became the largest consumer country for the second consecutive year, followed by Taiwan. The export controls imposed by the United States in the past 18 months may have contributed to China's last-minute orders before the cutting off of advanced IC production equipment.

SEMI said that the foundry and logic departments accounted for more than half of this year's fab equipment sales, an annual growth rate of 50% to $49.3 billion. It is estimated that by 2022, investment in these two areas will increase by 17%.

The continued strong demand for memory and storage by consumers and businesses has helped drive orders for DRAM and NAND devices. The DRAM sector has grown 52% annually to reach 15.1 billion USD. SEMI predicts that DRAM equipment sales will increase slightly to 15.3 billion US dollars next year. At the same time, the NAND equipment sector is expected to reach 19.2 billion US dollars this year, with an annual growth rate of 24%, and is expected to grow by 8% next year.

In view of the cyclicality of global memory technology demand, the industry organization expects the industry to shrink from 2023. However, the stable deployment of emerging all-flash memory in ultra-large-scale data centers may put the industry at a loss after 2022.

At the same time, demand for back-end assembly and packaging equipment is expected to surge 81% this year. SEMI said that the introduction of heterogeneous integration technology for advanced chip packaging applications will help maintain the growth of packaging equipment next year, albeit at a smaller rate.

Drivers for IC test equipment include 5G wireless deployment, many focused on private 5G networks, and high-performance computing applications entering enterprise data centers.

Since 1986, George Leopold has been writing articles on science and technology in Washington, DC. In addition to EE Times, Leopold's work has also appeared in The New York Times, New Scientist, and other publications. He lives in Reston, Virginia.

Since 1986, George Leopold has been writing articles on science and technology in Washington, DC. In addition to EE Times, Leopold's work has also appeared in The New York Times, New Scientist, and other publications. He lives in Reston, Virginia.

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