Since the start of the COVID pandemic, we’ve seen supply chain issues that include meat, toilet paper, and semiconductor chips—plus the wide variety of “things” that they control. Although hoarding toilet paper is no longer in vogue, if you’ve gone shopping for chips in recent years—like those in the ATtiny series –supplies are often limited or nonexistent. As a solution to this problem, efforts are underway to increase semiconductor manufacturing in the US.
In this article, we’ll explore what’s involved in semiconductor production and give a glimpse into the smart factory technology that will be needed to expand U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. While ramping up chip output is no simple task, the U.S. already has significant capacity and semiconductor production experience and won’t be starting from scratch.
Semiconductor Smart Factory – One Integrated Machine
The general idea of traditional mass manufacturing is that a product gets passed from one operation to another. Features are progressively and independently added. A chip fabricator, or simply “fab,” as with many other modern smart factories, works more like one integrated machine than a series of independent operations. That represents a significant capital expense in and of itself. In fact, in the semiconductor production process, work-in-progress silicon wafers are transported around the factory, not by humans, but by FOUPS, front-opening unified pods, that zip from point to point on an overhead rail system.
In addition to a fab being one integrated system, it’s also a clean room environment, with dust content kept to well below that of an operating room. This environment is critical, as even a single speck of dust on an in-process wafer can ruin it. Significant process automation means not just labor cost savings, but fewer humans present that inadvertently shed a (disgustingly) significant number of particles as they travel the fab.
Capital equipment to maintain this environment, transformers to handle massive power requirements, and even plumbing for process water must be considered. All this infrastructure, however, supports the heart of this process: a series of incredible ultraviolet lithography machines that form billions of transistors onto a silicon wafer. Such UV lithography machines are roughly the size of a bus and are potentially the most complicated machines ever made.
Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography – The Critical Semiconductor Production Technology
Chips from manufacturers such as Intel, TSMC, and Samsung are critical to everything from automobiles to cell phones. However, the machinery needed to make the world’s most advanced chips comes from one place, ASML, based in the Netherlands. ASML, which once stood for Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography, has since officially transcended acronym status. It makes extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, or EUVs, that are critical to making the world’s most advanced semiconductors. The newest processes from Intel, TSMC and Samsung can fit on the order of 100 million transistors in just a 1mm square area—an absolutely staggering number.
ASML Future with EUV Machines
While more established workhorse chips could use older non-EUV technology (which should also be considered, given the difficulty in finding many of these devices), for cutting edge fab, ASML is the only option in the world. Their EUV technology was developed over many years, at a cost of $9 billion. So massive was this effort, in fact, that Intel, Samsung, and TSMC all bought stakes in the company to support EUV development. While risky, this investment has resulted in the world’s ability to make chips at an even smaller scale, and the value of ASML has jumped significantly in recent years. In fact, it may eventually become Europe’s first trillion-dollar company.
Long story short, any fab looking to expand production of the most advanced chips, in the United States or elsewhere, will need to obtain between 9-18 of these EUV machines, at a price tag of roughly $150 million each. At the high end, just the EUV machines for one plant could run into the $3 billion range. Making this cost even more extreme, the next-generation of EUV machines are expected to cost “significantly” more than $340 million each. Using round numbers, if each one ended up being $500 million, and a plant needed 20 units, that’s $10 billion for a single fab.
Perhaps that number would decrease as more advanced EUV machines are made, but however things work out, the cost of an advanced fab is well into the billions of dollars. At the same time, if a fab location is one integrated machine, EUVs are but one aspect of a larger operation. $10 billion for a cutting-edge semiconductor production facility seems to be only the starting point.
Supplying the Semiconductor Smart Factory
We think of fabs as suppliers of components (i.e., chips) for other industries, but it’s important to remember that they too rely on a constant supply of materials and components to fuel their processes. This includes everything from power and water to consumables and even toilet paper. However, if EUV machines are the heart of the process, silicon wafers , on which transistors are formed, are the plant’s oxygen, pumped around the fab’s body by FOUP “blood cells.”
The good news here, from an America-centric perspective, is that the U.S. already produces a significant supply of silicon wafers that can be supplied to fabs. At the same time, even more raw silicon wafers may be needed as production ramps up, and other continuing fab needs will have to be considered and sourced. While challenging, expansion of chip production could be extremely rewarding, both from a supply security standpoint and because of the ripple effect through the economy via direct and supporting jobs.
Shorter Supply Chain… Can It Be Eliminated?
While it may be difficult for the U.S. to regain its position as the world’s dominant chip manufacturer, it isn’t as far behind as some would imagine. But any dream of the U.S. being entirely self-sufficient technology-wise seems to be a near-term fantasy. Even if the U.S. were to move all chip manufacturing onshore, Netherlands-based ASML is the only supplier for the equipment to make the world’s most advanced chips… which relies on a U.S.-based subsidiary Cymer to supply the advanced lasers for their machines… both of which certainly rely on other nations, companies, and people to supply components and expertise for their processes.
Increasing chip manufacturing in the U.S. is a massive task, which could yield widespread benefits. At the same time, in today’s interconnected world, every nation will have to rely on geographically wide-ranging supply chains for the foreseeable future. Let us prepare for the worst as we’re able but strive to keep friendly relations with other nations. Only then can we work together to prevent the sort of disruptions we saw, and have been seeing, since 2020.
