An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny MOSFETs 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 digital 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 processors and microcontrollers.
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically the metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) devices used in the 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 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.
National Semiconductor was an American semiconductor manufacturer which specialized in analog devices and subsystems, formerly with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The company produced power management integrated circuits, display drivers, audio and operational amplifiers, communication interface products and data conversion solutions. National's key markets included wireless handsets, displays and a variety of broad electronics markets, including medical, automotive, industrial and test and measurement applications.
STMicroelectronics is a French-Italian multinational electronics and semiconductors manufacturer headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland. The company resulted from the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies in 1987: "Thomson Semiconducteurs" of France and "SGS Microelettronica [it]" of Italy. It is commonly called "ST", and it is Europe's largest semiconductor chip maker based on revenue. While STMicroelectronics corporate headquarters and the headquarters for EMEA region are based in the Canton of Geneva, the holding company, STMicroelectronics N.V. is incorporated in the Netherlands.
Zarlink Semiconductor was a fabless semiconductor company specializing in the design and manufacture of communication and medical semiconductor integrated circuits, modules, and other devices. In 2011, Microsemi acquired Zarlink in a hostile takeover and merged it into its own operations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant is a factory where devices such as integrated circuits are manufactured.
The term die shrink refers to the scaling of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices. The act of shrinking a die is to create 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.
eSilicon is a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2000 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.
GlobalFoundries Inc. 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 Advanced Micro Devices (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.
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. is an Israeli company that manufactures integrated circuits using specialty process technologies, including SiGe, BiCMOS, SOI, mixed-signal and RFCMOS, CMOS image sensors, non-imaging sensors, power management (BCD), and non-volatile memory (NVM) as well as MEMS capabilities. Tower Semiconductor also owns 51% of TPSCo, an enterprise with Nuvoton Technology Corporation Japan (NTCJ).
The Chinese semiconductor industry, including IC design and manufacturing, forms a major part of mainland China's IT industry.
