The semiconductor foundry business and technology trend

The "dis-integration" of the world' s semiconductor business has resulted from the tremendous cost saving, short concept-to-product delivery cycles for market demand, as well as higher product quality with a fast growing advanced K: process technology foundry. IC foundry-fabless business for integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing is expected to grow from 12% in 1995 to approximately 20% (>$45B USD$) of total IC market in the year or 2000. The growth of this business will be even more significant for sub-0.25um technologies. The IC foundry logic technology has surge ahead in 0.25um, 0.18um and 0.15um manufacturing with high efficiency development speed. The 0.13um logic technology will be in the manufacturing mode in second half of this year. In this paper. we will review the foundry business model and the technology trend, and we expect the foundry technology will ahead of other IC manufacturing businesses in next decade.