I need to know what the price history is of raw silicon, used for
manufacturing integrated circuits (computer chips) from 1990-2003. So
the answer has to be an list of price points for those years,
including the unit of measure. Bear in mind that this is not about
ferro-silicon, which is used in steel manufacturing.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 15 Jan 2004 07:06 PST

The price history of raw silicon metal (non ferro-silicon) is
available at least back until 1990.

However, this is only the starting material to produce high-purity,
semiconductor-grade silicon, which is a specialty product accounting
for a very small quantity of the overall use of silicon metal.

Is it the general price of the starting material (silicon metal)
you're after (info is available) or the price of the finished
semiconductor-grade silicon (information may not be available)?

Let me know, and I'll do what I can to help out.

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Clarification of Question by chomsnl1-ga on 15 Jan 2004 17:21 PST

I am looking for the price history of the finished
semiconductor-grade silicon.

There's a table here (
http://dom.semi.org/web/wchannel.nsf/0/f3b884a74fe032808825673900643081?OpenDocument
{ you may find interesting.  It's got data every 5 years, by ingot
size.

I'm not finding much else.

-Haversian

This helps, even though it's not the final answer yet. There are three
things that I would still need for this question to be answered
sufficiently:
1. the document you provided doesn't have all the figures (some appear
as white space). Is there perhaps somewhere another copy of this same
document with all the tables in tact?
2. I need the price history of raw silicon from 1990 upto now (you
indicated that this would be available)
3. I need to understand what the ratio is between the price of
raw-silicon metal and high-purity semiconductor-grade silicon
Thanks, Charles

Goof afternoon chomsnl1,

You refer to the missing figures for larger ingots, at the top right of the table?

Those figures are missing because, at the time, the technology did not
exist to cost-effectively produce ingots of that size in sufficient
volume to supply the market.  Furthermore, the machinery to work with
wafers of that size did not exist.  Thus, no product was sold, and no
figures noted.  You'll notice the trend from smaller wafers years ago
to the current state-of-the-art 300mm wafers used in high-volume MPU
production, which yield more MPUs per wafer and are more efficient due
to less wasteage at the edges of the wafer.

One complication you may want to be aware of is that most of the
figures on the table I provided are for what is referred to as "bulk
silicon" - that is, a single large vapor-deposited silicon crystal. 
That is the most common type of silicon used in MPU manufacturing,
even today.  Also important is strained silicon, in which the crystal
has been persuaded to grow with more spacing between adjacent atoms
than would be usual which allows for a longer mean free path and thus
faster electron propagation through the semimconductor.  Strained
silicon is naturally more expensive than bulk silicon, but offers
higher speed in return.  For comparison purposes, I assume you would
be primarily or exclusively interested in bulk silicon pricing, as it
is still used for the majority of parts produced, correct?  Or are you
interested in developing an understanding of pricing trends throughout
the chip-producing industry?  In which case you'll also want to
investigate GaAs substrates, even more expensive than strained
silicon, but faster still.

Regarding point three, you're interested in both the price of raw
silicon and the price of ingots suitable for manufacturing every year
since '90?

-Haversian

what I mean by point 1, is that figures 1,3,4 are missing  in their
entirety in the document (there's a white space when I look at the
document).

Re the type of silicon, I am interested in bulk silicon only.

Re point 3, what I would expect there as an answer is that high-purity
semiconductor grade silicon is e.g. 500% of the price of raw silicon
per unit (weight, size or whatever). So the markup to go from raw to
refined silicon.

Oh!  I read "figures" as "numbers", not "diagrams".  Gotcha.

Offhand, I can't find them, but I've got to get to class.  When I get
back, I'll keep looking for you.


Pafalafa, I don't intend to be claiming this question as my own - if
you find the answer, by all means post it.