The semiconductor foundry business and technology trend

Summary form only given. The "disintegration" 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 IC process technology foundry. IC foundry-fabless business for IC manufacturing is expected to grow from 12% in 1995 to approximately 20%. (>$45 B USDS) of total IC market in the year of 2000. The growth of this business will be even more significant for sub-0.25 μm technologies. The IC foundry logic technology has surge ahead in 0.25 μm. 0.18 um and 0.15 μm manufacturing with high efficiency development speed. The 0.13 μm logic technology will be in the manufacturing made in second half of this year. In this paper, we review the foundry business model and the technology trend, and we expect the foundry technology will be ahead of other IC manufacturing businesses in the next decade