Semiconductors go through the designing, production, assembly & quality control, and manufacturing processes before going out into the market. Among corporations, there are IDM companies that take charge of all of these processes, and others like foundry and fabless companies that are in charge of specific tasks in the whole process. Let’s understand more about semiconductor ecosystem.
What is semiconductor ecosystem?
Semiconductors are chips that process digital information are in almost everything: computers, cars, home appliances, medical equipment, etc. Those at the top of the triangle, inside the semiconductor ecosystem, make chips and sell them to firms and government agencies on the right. These companies then incorporate these chips into systems and devices (e.g., iPhones, PCs, airplanes, cloud computing, etc.) and sell them to the masses, businesses, and governments. This revenue is worth tens of trillions-of dollars. You could observe and find that each and every industry comprising hundreds of industries is dependent on each other when peering into this simple triangular representation that describes the semiconductor industry. Restructuring high burstiness at a measured low perplexity through word count similar overall and also within HTML elements.
The segments of semiconductor ecosystem are:
EDA Tools
Chips are designed using Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software by engineers, adding their own designs to the IP cores they have purchased. The three main U.S. vendors that dominate this industry include Cadence, Mentor, now a subsidiary of Siemens, and Synopsys. Complex logic chips, such as those inside a phone, computer, or server microprocessor, are designed by a large engineering team in two or three years using these EDA tools.
Chip IP cores
The design of a chip may belong to an individual company. Many companies license their chip designs-as-software-building-blocks-called-IP Cores-for-wide-use. There are more than 150 chip IP core selling. For example, Apple licenses IP cores from ARM as a building block of their microprocessors in their iPhones and Computers.
Chemicals
There exist within the industries that construct chips, a narrow edge, which such factories have in common. They require chemicals and materials to buy, which will make process of chip production successful: The wafers of silicon include components for the construction of crystal growing furnaces. The bulk gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, argon, and helium, along with all other dissimilar and exotic/toxic gases. Fluids (photoresists, topcoats, CMP slurries). Photomasks, Wafer handling equipment, dicing, RF Generators.
WFE
Machines that make physical chips machines. These are the five companies that dominated the industry- Applied Materials, KLA, LAM, Tokyo Electron, and ASML. Some of the most complicated (and most expensive) machines on Earth. A slice from an ingot of silicon is taken and the atoms at and below the surface manipulated.
Fabless Companies
A fabless specializes in designing semiconductors. Everything other than designing, like wafer production, packaging, and testing are outsourced. But the possession and the business rights to the manufactured chips from the outsourced companies belong to the fabless. Therefore, it sells products under its own brand name.
IDM
Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) perform chip Design, chip manufacture in their own fabs, and chip marketing by themselves. Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) can be divided into three categories- Memory IDMs (Micron, SK Hynix), Logic IDMs (Intel), and Analog (TI, Analog Devices). They own dedicated “fabs” themselves but may also use foundries. Today, the average cost of taping out a new leading-edge chip (3 nanometers) is about $500 million.
Perhaps, mastering advanced chip manufacturing in the 21st century will prove to be like the supply of oil in the 20th century. It is the country that provides such manufacturing that can then choke off the military and economic powers of others.
