中国半导体行业历史及现状

A change of pace for the semiconductor industry?

In the case of standard products, efficient mastery of the production process is

a critical factor, in view of the typically high production scales. The ‘yield’, a

parameter which provides information concerning the number of non-defective

chips from each wafer processed, is a key metric. Moreover, effective capacity

and its utilization are important for the production of standard products, because

the modern production facilities used, for instance, in memory production have

a very high capacity and require very high levels of investment to set up.

Figure 3 compares products and certain characteristics, as well as factors of

success of standard and specific products.

Fig. 3 Comparison of standard and customer-specific products, as well as typical factors of

success

Mr Cuomo, in the aftermath of the crisis, do you expect consolidation in the industry?

Consolidation in the industry is happening now. It happens in two ways: one is that

companies go out of certain businesses; the other is through transactions. We have

already seen some M&A, but now we see companies that are starting to lose substantial

market shares in selected applications. And this trend is going to continue, especially on

the platform side. Consolidation will happen whether through M&A or not. And we have

seen M&A for the sake of M&A – at times the last step before collapse.

How do you think that business models within the industry will change? Are we going to

see the fabless trend continue?

It depends very much on the winning chip architectures. We are at the crossroads: we

either will see an evolution of today’s business, or we will see processor-centric

architectures in many applications, such as netbooks and smartphones. If the processor-

centric business will expand to market segments beyond the PC, then we shall experience

very important structural changes in the competitive scenario. Just to mention one, it is

very difficult for semiconductor companies to keep the design function separate from the

production process, because in the processor world the relation between chip design and

manufacturing process is extremely tight. As a consequence, there will be reduced space

for foundries, and the need to own a modern fab will trigger a very fast industry

consolidation process. If, on the other side, this business model does not succeed and

System-on-a-chip (SoC) prospers, then most companies will go fabless and we will have a

longer time horizon for consolidation. The semiconductor industryAndrea Cuomo, Executive Vice President, General Manager, Sales & Marketing, Europe, Middle East and Africa, STMicroelectronics

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