As of December 2020, only TSMC was among the wafer capacity leaders in each of the main wafer size categories ranked by IC Insights. The Taiwan-based foundry had the most 200mm wafer capacity last year, and ranked second in 300mm wafer capacity.

IC Insights indicated its 300mm ranking includes only DRAM and NAND flash memory suppliers like Samsung, Micron, SK Hynix and Kioxia/WD; four of the world's largest pure-play foundries TSMC, Globalfoundries, UMC and Powerchip (including Nexchip); and Intel, the industry's biggest manufacturer of microprocessors.

IC Insights continued that 300mm wafer capacity leaders offer the types of ICs that benefit most from using the largest wafer size available to best amortize the manufacturing cost per die. Moreover, they have the means to continue investing large sums of money in new and improved 300mm fab capacity.

Wafer capacity leaders in the 200mm size category consist of pure-play foundries and manufacturers that emphasize analog/mixed-signal ICs and microcontrollers, IC Insights said.

The ranking for the smaller wafer sizes (150mm and under) includes a more diversified group of companies, with two Chinese companies at the top, IC Insights noted. China Resources Microelectronics (CR Micro) and Silan Microelectronics both have very large 150mm fabs used mainly for the production of analog/mixed-signal ICs, power devices, and discrete semiconductors.

STMicroelectronics used to have a huge amount of 150mm wafer capacity for production of ICs at its fab site in Singapore but the company restructured its fab operations there in recent years. One fab was largely converted to manufacture MEMS-based microfluidic products and other fabs were upgraded to process 200mm wafers, according to IC Insights.