Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt

VEB Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt was an important manufacturer of active electronic components in East Germany. It should not be confused with the more well-known VEB Kombinat Robotron Dresden which used integrated circuits from Kombinat Mikroelektronik in its computers.

Their products often carried the trademark RFT, but this was used on most electronic products from East Germany from otherwise unrelated companies.

History

The Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt was formed in 1978 when the ''VVB Bauelemente und Vakuumtechnik'' was split into ''VEB Kombinat Elektronische Bauelemente Teltow'' for passive electronic components and ''VEB Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt'' for active electronic components. However, the history of many of the individual plants reaches back further, in some cases to before the Second World War. In 1971 the first integrated circuits had been manufactured — the D100C (TTL) by Halbleiterwerk Frankfurt (Oder) and the U101D (PMOS logic) by Funkwerk Erfurt. To put this into perspective, the first TTL circuits went into production in the US 10 years and at Siemens in West Germany 5 years before East Germany. The first microprocessor, the U808D, followed in 1978, 6 years after the Intel 8008 that the U808 was cloned from. Further milestones were the U880 (Zilog Z80 clone) in 1980 and the first 16-bit microprocessor U8000 (Zilog Z8000 clone) in 1984. The ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany had identified the development of the microelectronics sector as a primary goal. Huge sums were spent in order to catch up to the West — between 1986 and 1990 about 7% of the country-wide industry investment. However, this effort was hampered by several factors: the general inefficiency of the planned economy, insufficient cooperation with other Comecon countries, and western CoCom export restrictions that prevented the importation of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Nonetheless, the development program achieved samples of a 1Mbit dRAM chip (U61000) in 1988 and a 32-bit processor (U80701) in 1989. Mikroelektronik "Karl Marx" Erfurt achieved a feature size of 3 µm on 4-inch wafers in 1984 (plant ESO I), 2.5 Âµm in 1988 (plant ESO II), and 1.5 µm on 5-inch wafers in 1990 (plant ESO III). In 1989, Halbleiterwerk Frankfurt (Oder) produced 110 million integrated circuits and Mikroelektronik "Karl Marx" Erfurt produced 35 million.

After 1990

Following the German reunification, Kombinat Mikroelektronik was dissolved and operated for a time as a holding company under the name ''PTC-electronic AG'' which was 100% owned by the Treuhandanstalt. Most products from Kombinat Mikroelektronik could not be sold on the world market and many plants were liquidated by the Treuhandanstalt in 1991.

The ''Thesys Gesellschaft für Mikroelektronik mbH'' and the '' X-FAB Gesellschaft zur Fertigung von Wafern mbH'' were created in 1992 from parts of VEB Mikroelektronik "Karl Marx" Erfurt (which had operated under the name ERMIC GmbH from 1990 until 1992). In 1999 both companies were combined as ''X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries GmbH''. In 2007, X-FAB took over another former part of Kombinat Mikroelektronik: the foundry of the former VEB ZFTM Dresden. ZFTM Dresden had become ''Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden GmbH'' (ZMD) in 1993. After several ownership changes and the sale of the foundry to X-FAB, ZMD was renamed to ZMDI and the remaining fab-less design house was ultimately sold to Integrated Device Technology in 2015. Not far from Dresden in Freiberg, the wafer production of VEB Spurenmetalle continued through Siltronic and Freiberger Compound Materials GmbH. Together with TU Dresden, VEB ZFTM and VEB Spurenmetalle formed the foundation for Silicon Saxony, a cluster of microelectronics companies that came to include new fabs by Siemens (later Infineon Technologies) and AMD (later GlobalFoundries).

The Frankfurt (Oder) region did not fare as well. VEB Halbleiterwerk was succeeded, in turn, by Halbleiterwerk GmbH, System Microelectronic Innovation GmbH (SMI), Silicon Microelectronic Integration GmbH (SiMI), Megaxess GmbH Deutschland, and Microtechnology Services Frankfurt (Oder) GmbH (MSF), each with less employees than its predecessor. The website of MSF disappeared around 2009. Construction on a new semiconductor plant, Communicant Semiconductor Technologies, had started already but this endeavour collapsed in 2003. Only IHP, the research institute that had supported VEB Halbleiterwerk, remained after that.

At VEB Werk für Fernsehelektronik Berlin, the production of electronic tubes and optoelectronics was shut down step by step until only the relatively modern manufacturing of colour CRTs remained. In 1993 the CRT manufacturing was taken over by Samsung SDI. In 2005, when LCD screens largely replaced CRTs, the plant was shut down entirely.

VEB Mikroelektronik "Karl Liebknecht" Stahnsdorf became Leistungselektronik Stahnsdorf AG (LES AG) which was liquidated by the Treuhandanstalt in 1992. The semiconductor manufacturing was sold to Indian investors and continued under the name Lesag HBB. When the investors withdrew in the middle of the 1990s, the number of employees had fallen from 3000 in 1989 to 79. In 1996, several former employees founded SeCoS Halbleitertechnologie GmbH to continue semicondutor manufacturing in Stahnsdort. By 2001, the patents and rights of SeCoS were transferred to SeCoS Corporation in Taiwan. Only the small group developing silicon pressure sensors survived in Stahnsdorf and was acquired by Endress+Hauser.

In Neuhaus am Rennweg, the SMD packaging of VEB Mikroelektronik "Anna Seghers" became part of Zetex Semiconductors which was in turn acquired by Diodes Incorporated.

Divisions

The ''Kombinat'' consisted of a number of plants across East Germany (listed with their production profile in 1989):
* VEB Mikroelektronik "Karl Marx" Erfurt (MME), before 1983 Funkwerk Erfurt (FWE) — ''Kombinat'' headquarters; NMOS and CMOS digital integrated circuits
* VEB Halbleiterwerk Frankfurt (Oder) (HFO) — bipolar analogue and digital integrated circuits, mixed-signal integrated circuit