Around 2,174 million square inches of silicon wafers were shipped during the most recent quarter, up around five per cent year over year, market watchers reported today.

SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) described the production volumes as " essentially flat sequentially", and predicted that wafer shipments will remain on track to see around eight per cent growth for the year.

"In line with the historic pattern, the pace of wafer area shipments has slowed slightly for the third quarter," said Dr Volker Braetsch, chairman of SEMI SMG and corporate vice president at Siltronic AG.

"This is the result of smaller area diameter wafer shipments declining while 300mm wafer shipments continued to grow."

Highly engineered thin round silicon wafer disks are produced in various diameters (from one to 12 inches) and serve as the substrate material on which most semiconductor devices are fabricated.

SEMI SMG's estimates include polished silicon wafers, virgin test wafers, epitaxial silicon wafers, and non-polished silicon wafers shipped by manufacturers to end users.