Foundry
The term foundry (also English silicon foundry ) refers to a company active in the field of microelectronics that manufactures products for other semiconductor companies in its semiconductor factories ( English semiconductor fabrication plans , short: “ fab ”), cf. Manufacturing plant . The term originally comes from English and means foundry .
background
With classic semiconductor manufacturers , also called IDM ( English integrated device manufacturer ), development and production are in one hand. Due to the ever increasing technical demands on production, the construction and commissioning of corresponding factories is becoming more and more capital-intensive. The creation of factories for semiconductor wafers ( wafer ) with usual today feature sizes in the lower nanometer range cost several billion euros. The operation is also no less complex and only profitable if the production facilities are well utilized, among other things due to the high cost pressure and price erosion in the industry. Few large companies can afford this effort to manufacture their own products.
The business model of a foundry enables companies to develop and sell highly specialized and competitive circuits without having to invest in their own factory. The integrated circuits are then mostly manufactured using standard technologies developed by foundries or their technology cooperation partners. Characteristic data of the components to be processed and layout guidelines are made available to the companies for development so that they can be used there for synthesis and simulation (see chip design ).
market
The largest pure ( English pure-play ) Foundries are the Taiwanese company TSMC and UMC . The European foundries include the German foundries X-FAB (including the former Altis-Fab in France) and LFoundry . Even IDM semiconductor companies as the Austrian ams AG offer some of foundry services.
rank | company | country | 2016 sales in USD million |
---|---|---|---|
1 | TSMC | 29,488 | |
2 | Globalfoundries | 5,545 | |
3 | UMC | 4,582 | |
4th | SMIC | 2,921 | |
5 | Power chip | 1,275 | |
6th | TowerJazz | 1,249 | |
7th | Vanguard (VIS) | 800 | |
8th | Huahong Grace | 712 | |
9 | Dongbu Hitek | 672 | |
10 | X-FAB | 510 |
Individual evidence
- ↑ X-Fab, SMIC and TowerJazz grew ≥30% in the last year. IC Insights. Evertiq, January 16, 2017, accessed February 1, 2017 .