Fab lite diet for analogs?
Over the last few years, we have been seeing IDMs outsourcing their digital production needs to the foundries. Now looks like, a similar path may be taken by the big analog IDMs too – or at least “their interest level in outsourcing has dramatically increased”, as per Thomas Hartung, VP of Sales & marketing for X-Fab.
Read a couple of interesting articles which highlight this potential move; here are few points from them which I’d like to share:
For years, analog IDMs have manufactured the bulk of their products in-house, shipping only a small percentage to foundries, for a number of reasons.
- Many analog products do not require leading-edge fabs or processes. - Most analog ICs have relatively small die sizes and wafer volumes are hence low as compared to their digital counterparts ; this does not work well with outside foundries- Analog products generally have longer life cycles and can be made cheaply in older fabs for several years.
- The real money makers in analog sell in modest volumes year after year; something that works for an internal fab but not at an expensive foundry.
- And analog vendors insist fabs still give them a competitive edge as they work on the edges of highly optimized, internally developed processes
This doesn’t mean foundries have no role in the analog IC world. Foundries can effectively support fabless vendors of ICs that have considerable digital content but only modest analog content and that don’t push the envelope of analog performance. On the other hand, the specialized foundries are trying to get these analog IDMs look more towards outsourcing their production needs to them. Hans-Jurgen Straub, CEO, X-Fab Group, says that analog IDMs should focus on product innovation rather than on process innovation. Besides pushing its own analog & mixed signal processes, Germany’s X-Fab has also been acquiring fabs from various IDMs.(a US fab from TI in 1999, a UK fab from Zarlink semiconductor in 2002, last year acquisition of Malaysia’s 1st Silicon and then ZMD AG’s wafer processing subsidiary early this year).
So, it is to be seen whether the analog IDMs will beat the same path as digital IDMs or continue in the old fashioned way