Early RFI Submissions on Chips Crunch Offer Little Information

The public likely won’t gain much insight from the Commerce Department’s request for information on risks in the semiconductor supply chain, early submissions in docket BIS-2021-0036 from several chipmakers indicate. The department’s Bureau of Industry and Security put out the RFI in September -- submissions were due Monday -- to help the secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security prepare a report to the White House on the chips crunch by the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order (see 2109230038). BIS gave companies an Excel template for them to fill in with especially sensitive information about conditions upstream and downstream in the supply chain, including confidential sales and sourcing data, plus rundowns on order backlogs and an accounting of specific product shipments in the past month. Micron Technology responded by releasing nothing for public consumption, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Tower Semiconductor left their templates largely blank. TSMC asked for confidential treatment of its cover letter, and its spreadsheet contained fewer tidbits of information than are available in its ordinary public filings. TSMC increased annual capacity 6% last year to 13 million wafers from 12.3 million in 2019, said its spreadsheet. Production volume increased 23.1% in 2020 to 12.4 million units (95.4% of capacity) from 10.07 million (81.9%) in 2019. TSMC forecasts 24% revenue growth in 2021 to $56.6 billion, but the template gives no 2021 guidance on wafer production or capacity. TSMC measures capacity in “12-inch equivalent wafers,” said its 2020 annual report. Its capacity increase last year “was primarily from the expansion of our 5-nanometer and 7-nanometer advanced technologies,” it said. Tower Semiconductor is a publicly traded analog “pure-play foundry company,” said its “supplemental explanation” sheet. It can’t comment, under nondisclosure agreements with its customers, on “order backlog specifics, product attributes, past month sales” or the locations of customers' packaging and assembly facilities.