中国半导体行业历史及现状

A change of pace for the semiconductor industry?

Fig. 1 The semiconductor industry and its environment

● Integrated device manufacturers (IDM) are companies which operate along

the entire value chain in semiconductor manufacturing. The considerable

levels of investment for a new semiconductor production facility have resulted

in many IDMs changing over to what is known as a fab-light strategy. This

means that existing production capacities are retained and that newly

developed semiconductors, which require more modern manufacturing

procedures – for instance, as a result of very small feature sizes – are

manufactured by partner companies.

● On the other hand, fabless companies focus exclusively on research and

development, as well as sales of products. They do not have their own

production facilities; they use semiconductors manufactured by other

companies. Not only are no costs incurred for establishing production

facilities, no fixed costs are incurred in conjunction with these factories.

● Some companies devote themselves exclusively to licensing (intellectual

property or IP companies). They specialise in the design of certain modules

and license the resulting intellectual property to their customers. Unlike

fabless companies, IP companies do not have sales operations and license

their design and development services exclusively to third parties. There are

also companies which focus on electronic design automation (EDA).

Compared with the other business models, the volume of sales generated by

IP and EDA companies is a small part of the overall market.

● Foundries do not do product development; they manufacture semiconductors

in their own facilities for other market participants, such as fabless

companies. Foundries mostly operate large and modern production facilities,

which they attempt always to operate at high levels of capacity utilisation, by

managing commissioned production. The semiconductor industryThe main business models in the semiconductor industry are integrated device manufacturers, fabless, foundry, and assembly and test. Suppliers such as manufacturers of installations and equipment also have an important role to play.

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