As often happens, the price of processors and graphics cards is subject to a margin and prices dictated by the market for the materials it is made of and except for long-term contracts, prices fluctuate and adjust from time to time. . But everything is over and when it comes to renewing the contractors and builders will find a daunting scenario that they will have to transfer to the users.
Platelet makers fear an uncontrolled rise
There are a number of ancillary industries within the semiconductor industry. Starting with minerals and ending with electricity, but what happened last night with one of the most used minerals is extremely worrying.
And it is that the market prices of polysilicon increased by more than 20% until reaching the $ 36 approximately per kilogram of this mineral. This is going to have two quite serious and totally different consequences, mainly because the reasons for such a sudden surge in a key mineral for the entire semiconductor industry are not yet understood.
The first scenario concerns the major insert manufacturers in the world, such as GlobalWafers, Formosa Sumco Technology and Wafer Works. These companies and others of equal importance have entered into contracts at a fixed price that will be honored until the end of the contract. This is on the one hand very good because it gives stability to the product market, but on the other hand it means that if the price trend is the same by the end of the year (when renewing contracts generally) we could see a price increase by 2022.
Market manipulation or stock building?
If everything continues like this and nothing seems to say otherwise, given the solar panel market and its incredible price hike, polysilicon is going to be a headache for Intel, TSMC and Samsung.
While the reasons for the price hike, as we said, are unclear, the first analysts to jump on one highlighted two different scenarios: market manipulation or inventory build-up.
In the second case, it is difficult to understand, because there is no way to TSMC, Samsung and Intel produce more chips in response to existing demand. If they are not sufficient for this crucial task, it is because the wafer that arrives wafer which is engraved and sold in chips, ergo we only understand that there is an accumulation of stocks if the wafer production capacity is much greater in global demand for chips, a little complicated in principle.
Market manipulation is not even refuted as such, but such a sudden increase in the final price is certainly not something you see every day. How could they prove it? Complicated, it would take clues beyond a theory and it would surely take a long time to prove it empirically.
In any case, if it doesn’t slow down (and there’s no indication that it will be like that anytime soon) in 2022 we will have much more expensive CPUs and GPUs and with no speculation involved.
