 | |
| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| TWSE: 3661 | |
| Industry | Semiconductors |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | |
Key people | Kinying Kwan (Founder and Chairman), Johnny Shen (CEO) |
| Products | ASIC |
Number of employees | 400+ (2019) |
| Website | www |
Alchip is a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2003 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Alchip specializes in the design and manufacture of digital CMOS ASICs.
Alchip's headquarters is in Taipei, Taiwan. Alchip also has locations in Santa Clara, California in the US, Shin-Yokohama in Japan, Shanghai, Wuxi, Hefei and Jinan in China, and Hsinchu in Taiwan. [1]
In April 2002 Cadence acquired Simplex Solutions, an ASIC design services company. [2] Alchip was founded six months later by Kinying Kwan and other former Simplex employees as a fabless ASIC supplier. Simplex Solutions had designed the graphics ASIC for Sony's PlayStation 2 game console. [3] Sony became an important customer of Alchip as well. In 2006 80% of Alchip's revenues were from Japan, and most of that was from Sony. [4] In September 2008 Alchip's relationship with Sony took another step forward when it was announced that it would partner with Sony's microelectronics to provide packaging solutions for Alchip's customer's ASICs. [5] Over the past decade, Alchip has received investments from several tech heavyweights, including Global Future Group, Investar, AcerVC, Cisco Systems, C2Capital, and notably Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the biggest contract chipmaker in the world, owns a 20% stake in the firm. [3] [6] [7] On December 23, 2010, Alchip went public and was listed on the Taiwan Emergent Market under the stock ticker number 3661. On October 28, 2014, Alchip debuted on the Taiwan Stock Exchange's main market. This move opened Alchip to institutional and private investors and boosted its profile within the industry.[ citation needed ]
In April 2021 the US Government blacklisted seven Chinese supercomputing companies due to alleged involvement in supplying equipment to the PLA, Chinese military–industrial complex, and WMD programs. In response Alchip and TSMC suspended new orders from Chinese supercomputing company Tianjin Phytium Information Technology. Phytium accounted for 39% of Alchip’s revenue. [8]
Alchip provides physical design, design for test insertion, package design, product qualification, IP licensing, and manufacturing services for digital CMOS ASICs. Alchip has announced products in 180 nm, 130 nm, 90 nm, 65 nm, 40 nm, 32 nm, 28 nm, and 16 nm process technologies. Customer ASICs have been announced in a wide range of applications including medical image processing, supercomputing, crypto-mining and networking. [9] [10] [11]
Alchip adopts an open foundry model and outsources semiconductor manufacturing to TSMC, UMC, SMIC, and Samsung. It also works with captive fab such as SONY and Toshiba. As of 2014, over 85% of Alchip projects are outsourced to TSMC. Alchip also outsources packaging, assembly, and testing. Alchip owns a Verigy 93K tester platform on which it performs test development and the test of ASIC prototypes. [12]
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuits (ICs) such as computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step photolithographic and physio-chemical process during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer, typically made of pure single-crystal semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors are used for specialized applications.
STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST is the largest European semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. The company resulted from the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies in 1987: Thomson Semiconducteurs of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited 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 its country's largest company, with headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu. It is majority owned by foreign investors, with the central government of Taiwan as the largest shareholder.
The semiconductor industry is the aggregate of companies engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductors and semiconductor devices, such as transistors and integrated circuits. It formed around 1960, once the fabrication of semiconductor devices became a viable business. The industry's annual semiconductor sales revenue has since grown to over $481 billion, as of 2018. The semiconductor industry is in turn the driving force behind the wider electronics industry, with annual power electronics sales of £135 billion as of 2011, annual consumer electronics sales expected to reach $2.9 trillion by 2020, tech industry sales expected to reach $5 trillion in 2019, and e-commerce with over $29 trillion in 2017. In 2019, 32.4% of the semiconductor market segment was for networks and communications devices.
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.
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication 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 may offer integrated-circuit design services to third parties.
An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a partially state-owned publicly listed Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry company. It is the largest contract chip maker in mainland China.
Credence Systems Corporation was a manufacturer of test equipment for the global semiconductor industry, with a major focus on solving specific challenges facing the fast-growing consumer-driven semiconductor markets. Founded in 1978 by David Mees as Semiconductor Test Solutions, the company changed its name to Credence after acquiring Axiom and ASIX in 1990. The company's initial public offering was completed on October 28, 1993. It was publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock market under the symbol CMOS before the merger with LTX in 2008. It was headquartered in Milpitas, California, and was established in twenty countries.
The term die shrink refers to the scaling of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) devices. The act of shrinking a die creates a somewhat identical circuit using a more advanced fabrication process, usually involving an advance of lithographic nodes. This reduces overall costs for a chip company, as the absence of major architectural changes to the processor lowers research and development costs while at the same time allowing more processor dies to be manufactured on the same piece of silicon wafer, resulting in less cost per product sold.
Faraday Technology Corporation is a fabless ASIC / SoC and silicon IP provider. From specification level to GDSII-in, its flexible engagement model allows customers at various levels in the design phase to begin ASIC implementation.
eSilicon was a fabless semiconductor company founded in 1999 in San Jose, California. eSilicon designs and manufactures digital CMOS and finFET ASICs. In addition, eSilicon designs market-specific semiconductor IP platforms and provides custom IC manufacturing services. eSilicon is considered a pioneer of the fabless ASIC model. They focus on developing and managing the manufacturing process of complex finFET-class chips, 2.5D packaging solutions and advanced semiconductor IP for customers in the high-bandwidth networking, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G infrastructure markets.
eASIC is a fabless semiconductor company offering new ASIC devices used in the production of customized silicon devices. eASIC specializes in offering new ASIC devices that are customized for specific applications and offer improved performance and lower costs compared to traditional ASICs. The company's products are used in a variety of markets, including communications, data center, and military. One of the key features of eASIC's ASIC devices is their use of a novel architecture known as Structured ASIC. This architecture allows the company to offer customized ASICs with shorter design cycles and lower non-recurring engineering (NRE) costs compared to traditional ASICs. In addition to its ASIC products, eASIC also offers a range of design tools and services to help customers design and implement their ASIC solutions. The company works closely with its customers to understand their specific requirements and develop customized solutions that meet their needs.
GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, the company was privately owned by Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, until an initial public offering (IPO) in October 2021.
Semiconductor consolidation is the trend of semiconductor companies collaborating in order to come to a practical synergy with the goal of being able to operate in a business model that can sustain profitability.
Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) is a worldwide fabless ASIC design service company, with its headquarters located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Achronix Semiconductor is an American fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California with an additional R&D facility in Bangalore, India, and an additional sales office in Shenzhen, China. Achronix is a diversified fabless semiconductor company that sells FPGA products, embedded FPGA (eFPGA) products, system-level products and supporting design tools. Achronix was founded in 2004 in Ithaca, New York based on technology licensed from Cornell University. In 2006, Achronix moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley.
The Taiwanese semiconductor industry, including IC manufacturing, design, and packing, forms a major part of Taiwan's IT industry. Due to its strong capabilities in OEM wafer manufacturing and a complete industry supply chain, Taiwan has been able to distinguish itself from its competitors and dominate the global marketplace. Taiwan’s semiconductor sector accounted for US$115 billion, around 20 percent of the global semiconductor industry. In sectors such as foundry operations, Taiwanese companies account for 50 percent of the world market, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) the biggest player in the foundry market.
The Chinese semiconductor industry, including integrated circuit design and manufacturing, forms a major part of mainland China's information technology industry.
| Semiconductor | |
|---|---|
| SiP design | |
| Other | |
| Defunct | |
