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Fabless
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclusively, located in the United States, China, and Taiwan. Fabless companies can benefit from lower capital costs while concentrating their research and development resources on the end market. Some fabless companies and pure play foundries (like TSMC) may offer integrated-circuit design services to third parties. History Prior to the 1980s, the semiconductor industry was vertically integrated. Semiconductor companies owned and operated their own silicon-wafer fabrication facilities and developed their own process technology for manufacturing their chips. These companies also carried out the assembly and testing of their own chips. As with most technology-intensive industries, the silicon manufacturing process presents high barriers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundry Model
The foundry model is a microelectronics engineering and manufacturing business model consisting of a semiconductor fabrication plant, or foundry, and an integrated circuit design operation, each belonging to separate companies or subsidiaries. Integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) design and manufacture integrated circuits. Many companies, known as fabless semiconductor companies, only design devices; merchant or pure play foundries only manufacture devices for other companies, without designing them. Examples of IDMs are Intel, Samsung, and Texas Instruments, examples of fabless companies are AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, and examples of pure play foundries are GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and UMC. Integrated circuit production facilities are expensive to build and maintain. Unless they can be kept at nearly full use, they will become a drain on the finances of the company that owns them. The foundry model uses two methods to avoid these costs: fabless companies avoid costs by n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integrated Device Manufacturer
An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products. IDM is often used to refer to a company which handles semiconductor manufacturing in-house, compared to a fabless semiconductor company, which outsources production to a third-party semiconductor fabrication plant. Examples of IDMs are Intel, Samsung, and Texas Instruments, examples of fabless companies are AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, and examples of pure play foundries are GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and UMC. Due to the dynamic nature of the semiconductor industry, the term IDM has become less accurate than when it was coined. OSATs The term OSATs means "outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers". OSATs have dominated IC packaging and testing.http://semiengineering.com/tag/osats/ outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers (OSATs) Fabless operations The terms fabless (fabrication-less), foundry, and IDM are now use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integrated Circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Transistor count, Large numbers of tiny MOSFETs (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors) integrate into a small chip. This results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete electronic components. The IC's mass production capability, reliability, and building-block approach to integrated circuit design has ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in virtually all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size and low cost of ICs such as mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qualcomm
Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4G, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA and WCDMA mobile communications standards. Qualcomm was established in 1985 by Irwin M. Jacobs and six other co-founders. Its early research into CDMA wireless cell phone technology was funded by selling a two-way mobile digital satellite communications system known as Omnitracs. After a heated debate in the wireless industry, the 2G standard was adopted with Qualcomm's CDMA patents incorporated. Afterwards there was a series of legal disputes about pricing for licensing patents required by the standard. Over the years, Qualcomm has expanded into selling semiconductor products in a predominantly fabless manufacturing model. It also developed semiconductor components or software for vehicles, watches, laptops ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiconductor Chip
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny MOSFETs (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors) integrate into a small chip. This results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete electronic components. The IC's mass production capability, reliability, and building-block approach to integrated circuit design has ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in virtually all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size and low cost of ICs such as modern computer proce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundry (electronics)
In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab; sometimes foundry) is a factory where devices such as integrated circuits are manufactured. Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab over one billion U.S. dollars with values as high as $3–4 billion not being uncommon. TSMC invested $9.3 billion in its ''Fab15'' 300 mm wafer manufacturing facility in Taiwan. The same company estimations suggest that their future fab might cost $20 billion. A foundry model emerged in the 1990s: Foundries that produced their own designs were known as integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). Companies that farmed out manufacturing of their designs to foundries were termed fabless semiconductor companies. Those foundries, which did not create their own designs, were called pure-play semiconductor foundries. The central part of a fab is the clean room, an area where the environment is controlled to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nvidia
Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to early-mid 2000s. Though unofficial, second letter capitalization of NVIDIA, i.e. nVidia, may be found within enthusiast communities and publications. ( ) is an American multinational technology company incorporated in Delaware and based in Santa Clara, California. It is a software and fabless company which designs graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interface (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Nvidia is a global leader in artificial intelligence hardware and software. Its professional line of GPUs are used in workstations for applications in such fields as architecture, engineering and construction, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company, the world's largest dedicated independent ( pure-play) semiconductor foundry, and one of Taiwan's largest companies, with its headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu. It is majority owned by foreign investors. Founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang, TSMC was the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry and has long been the leading company in its field. When Chang retired in 2018, after 31 years of TSMC leadership, Mark Liu became chairman and C. C. Wei became Chief Executive. It has been listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE: 2330) since 1993; in 1997 it became the first Taiwanese company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TSM). Since 1994, TSMC has had a compound annual growth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conexant Systems
Conexant Systems, Inc. was an American-based software developer and fabless semiconductor company that developed technology for voice and audio processing, imaging and modems. The company began as a division of Rockwell International, before being spun off as a public company. Conexant itself then spun off several business units, creating independent public companies which included Skyworks Solutions and Mindspeed Technologies. The company was acquired by computing interface technology company Synaptics, Inc. in July 2017. History In 1996, Rockwell International Corporation incorporated its semiconductor division as Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, Inc. On January 4, 1999, Rockwell spun off Conexant Systems, Inc. as a public company. It was listed on the NASDAQ under symbol CNXT on January 4, 1999. At that time, Conexant became the world's largest, standalone communications- IC company. Dwight W. Decker was its first chief executive officer and chairman of its board of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiconductor Fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step sequence of photolithographic and chemical processing steps (such as surface passivation, thermal oxidation, planar diffusion and junction isolation) during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer made of pure semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors are used for specialized applications. The entire manufacturing process takes time, from start to packaged chips ready for shipment, at least six to eight weeks (tape-out only, not including the circuit design) and is performed in highly specialized semiconductor fabrication plants, also called foundries or fabs. All fabrication takes place ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pure Play
A pure play company focuses solely on a particular product or activity. Investing in a pure play company can be considered as investing in a particular commodity or product of a company. Pure play firms either specialize in a specific niche, or have little to no vertical integration. For example, a coffee shop may call itself a "pure play" restaurant, and a factory that only produces goods (not designing or selling to consumers) may refer to itself as a pure play manufactory. E-commerce companies are often referred to as pure play retailers, as they sell only through the Internet. Pure play method In finance, the "pure play method" is an approach used to estimate the cost of equity capital of private companies, which involves examining the beta coefficient of other public and single focused companies. See also Hamada's equation. Here, when estimating a private company A's equity beta coefficient, the equity beta coefficient of a public company B is needed; the latter can b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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