Date: 07/03/2011

The top ten semiconductor fabs with 300mm facility

Semiconductor market researcher IC Insights has created a "Power" Rating combining each company's rank in 300mm wafer capacity and its rank in capital spending of leading semiconductor fabs in the world.

The top fabs are using huge capital as barriers for new-entrants in this industry. The reality is, semiconductor manufacturing equipments are man made machines. So to make them or invent something new, the human skill in advanced science is more important than the huge capital. The ideas seed in the top universities on how to make devices without using present machines so that the cost of device making not depend on highly priced robotic machines in present fabs.

But for the moment, may be for couple of years, as IC Insights suggested capital investment is the trend in the semiconductor fab industry.

Here below is what IC Insights has reported some of its finding:
Overall, IC Insights believes that the top-10 companies in the "Power" ranking will be the primary drivers in adding capacity over the next few years. Among the companies ranked 11 through 22 are five that are moving to or continuing with a fab-lite strategy-Renesas, IBM, TI, ST, and Fujitsu. Even though TI and ST are adding some 300mm capacity for analog ICs, these five companies are essentially out of the running for adding large blocks of new 300mm capacity in the future. The others in the 11-to-22 group are mostly limited by funding availability (e.g., Powerchip, SMIC, ProMOS, Winbond, and Xinxin) or by a lack of desire (e.g., Rohm and Panasonic) to add significant amounts of 300mm capacity to produce leading-edge digital ICs.
Top semiconductor fabs list:
ee Herald