Photomasks Drought and AI Chip Innovations

Photomasks in shortage

Due to the high demand for the commodity from Chinese chip fabless and foundry businesses, the shortage of photomasks is continuing despite the fact that the world economy is experiencing a slump.

Toppan, Photronics, and Dai Nippon Printing are all maintaining factory operation rates of one hundred percent, according to sources. Photomask manufacturers are also doing the same.

On top of that, they mentioned that certain Chinese semiconductor makers are even paying additional fees in order to reduce the delivery time.

Quartz blank masks serve as the foundation for the creation of photomasks, which are then adorned with circuit designs. They are comparable to film that is used in film cameras.

Photomask patterns are lithographed onto wafers. This ultraviolet technique requires dozens of sets of photomasks.

Increasingly photomasks are required in order to create thinner circuit designs for increasingly advanced processors. For instance, a process that is considered to be legacy may require thirty units, whereas the most advanced process will require seventy to eighty units.

As a result of restrictions imposed by the United States, China registered 3,243 fabless chip enterprises in the previous year. Another factor that contributed to the worsening of the photomask scarcity was the introduction of the DUV 7nm process by the Chinese foundry SMIC. For multi-patterning, the DUV technique requires a greater number of masks than the EUV procedure does.

In addition, the rise in the number of companies that manufacture artificial intelligence chips is another factor that was prompted by the success of ChatGPT.

During the most recent fiscal quarter financial report (which covered the period from July to September), Toppan stated that the company anticipates that the robust demand for photomasks will continue this year. Additionally, Dai Nippon Printing was in agreement regarding its results report for the period of April to September.

It was announced by Toppan that the company intends to increase the capacity of its photomask manufacture through its global production facilities.

However, according to sources, the additional capacity of photomask manufacturers will not be sufficient to fulfill demand, which will result in an inevitable increase in the price of the commodity in the following year.

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