Foundry technology and services

Summary form only give, as follows. The idea of a dedicated foundry started as a one-man vision eleven years ago with establishment of TSMC and blossomed into a multi-billion industry today. With the ever higher cost of building a new IC fab and the success of “virtual fab” business model, dedicated foundry companies have greater opportunities to increase their market share in the semiconductor industry. The customer base is extending beyond traditional fabless IC companies, system and sub-system vendors into integrated device manufacturers (IDM). In the past, foundry companies were always one to two generations behind the leading-edge technologies developed by top semiconductor companies. However, with the increasing demand of high performance IC chips and shortening of IC product life cycle as well as staying competitiveness in process technology, foundry companies have made greater progress in catching up to be at par with the leading IC companies. With the adoption of generic technologies which are used by a large group of customers and the gains in manufacturing economy of scale, the results are much reduced manufacturing cost. Another proof of the success of the foundry offered technologies is the proliferation of cell libraries based on foundry specific technologies. Meanwhile, the services that foundry companies provide will also have to reach the level of one-stop turn-key services. These include value-added design related services such as verified cell libraries and IP providers as well as backend activities such as packaging and testing. The concept of a virtual fab crystallizes the essence of what services a successful foundry company have to provide. It has to be a seamless interface between customers and foundries. It has to be: responsive and convenient, even more than customer´s own fab in the case of IDM customers. Leading edge manufacturing technology, advanced and flexible computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) system, world-class certified quality, and services are the areas that we believe will be the challenges to the foundry industry in the 21th century