Semiconductor industry

The global semiconductor industry is dominated by companies from the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands, with Israel and Germany having significant presence in the field.^[15]

Unique features of the industry include continuous growth but in a cyclical pattern with high volatility.^[16] While the current 20-year annual average growth of the semiconductor industry is on the order of 13%, this has been accompanied by equally above-average market volatility, which can lead to significant if not dramatic cyclical swings. This has required the need for high degrees of flexibility and innovation in order to constantly adjust to the rapid pace of change in the market as many products embedding semiconductor devices often have a very short life cycle.^{[citation needed]}

At the same time, the rate of constant price-performance improvement in the semiconductor industry is staggering. As a consequence, changes in the semiconductor market not only occur extremely rapidly but also anticipate changes in industries evolving at a slower pace. The semiconductor industry is widely recognized as a key driver and technology enabler for the whole electronics value chain.^[17]

Prior to the 1980s, the semiconductor industry was vertically integrated. Semiconductor companies both designed and manufactured chips in their own facilities. In many cases, this included inventing new processes, refining and purifying source chemicals and silicon wafers, and even manufacturing equipment, like furnaces, lithography tools and etchers. These companies also carried out the assembly and testing of their chips. Over time, many of these functions were outsourced, such that today semiconductor manufacturers rely on a complex supply chain to provide wafers, high purity source chemicals, and processing equipment. Further, starting with LSI in 1969, the industry has seen the emergence of Fabless Semiconductor Companies that focus solely on chip design and rely on other companies to manufacture their designs. Initially, these other companies were integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), companies that also designed and manufactured their own products, and thus were often competitors of the Fabless companies. But, by the mid-1980's TSMC and UMC emerged as foundries, specializing solely in the manufacture of other companies' designs.

Today, much of the industry is based on the foundry model, which consists of semiconductor fabrication plants (foundries) and integrated circuit design operations, each belonging to separate companies or subsidiaries. Some companies, known as integrated device manufacturers, both design and manufacture semiconductors. The foundry model has resulted in consolidation among foundries. As of 2021, only three firms are able to manufacture the most advanced semiconductors: TSMC of Taiwan, Samsung of South Korea, and Intel of the United States.^[18] Part of this is due to the high capital costs of building foundries. TSMC's latest factory, capable of fabricating 3 nm process semiconductors and completed in 2020, cost $19.5 billion.^[18]

Intel is considering outsourcing some production to TSMC. It currently can only produce 10 nm semiconductors, while TSMC and Samsung can both produce 5 nm.^[18] GlobalFoundries, an American-headquartered firm, uses a 12 nm process for its most advanced chips due to the rapidly increasing development costs of smaller process nodes.^[19]

More information Name, Country ...

Major semiconductor companies

Name	Country	Manufacturer type[36]	Hardware products
Samsung Electronics	South Korea	IDM	NAND flash memory, DRAM, CMOS sensor, RF transceivers, OLED display, SSD
Intel	United States	IDM	x86-64 microprocessor, GPU, SSD, DRAM
TSMC	Taiwan	Pure-play
SK Hynix[a]	South Korea	IDM	flash memory, DRAM, SSD, CMOS sensor
Micron[b]	United States	IDM	DRAM, NAND flash, SSD, NOR flash, Managed NAND, multichip packages
Qualcomm	United States	Fabless	RF module, digital signal processor, Snapdragon system on chip
Broadcom	United States	Fabless	Broadband/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modems, Custom DSP & ARM CPUs
Kioxia[c]	Japan	IDM	NAND flash memory, SSD
Texas Instruments (TI)	United States	IDM	Microcontroller, SoC, DSP, Amplifiers, data converters
Analog Devices[d]	United States	IDM	Amplifiers, data converters, audio & video products, RF & microwave, sensors, MEMS
Qorvo	United States	IDM	RF module, filters, Amplifiers, PMIC
Microchip	United States	IDM	Microcontrollers and analog semiconductors
NXP	Netherlands	IDM	PMIC Media processor, MIFARE, LPC
MediaTek	Taiwan	Fabless	SoC, chipset, CPU, GPU, DSP
Infineon[e]	Germany	IDM	Microcontrollers and power semiconductor devices
Bosch	Germany	IDM
STMicroelectronics	France/ Italy	IDM	ASIC, Microcontrollers
Sony	Japan	IDM	Active-pixel sensor, NAND flash memory
ARM	United Kingdom	Fabless	Instruction set architecture
AMD	United States	Fabless	x86-64 CPU, GPU, motherboard chipset, SDRAM
Nvidia	United States	Fabless	GPU
ON Semiconductor	United States	IDM
UMC	Taiwan	Pure-play
Apple	United States	Fabless	Apple silicon
IBM	United States	Fabless	IBM Power microprocessors, z/Architecture
Mitsubishi Electric	Japan	IDM	Power semiconductor devices
Tower Semiconductor	Israel	IDM
Xilinx	United States	Fabless	programmable logic device
SMIC	China	Pure-play
Wolfspeed	United States	IDM	SiC
Nordic Semiconductor	Norway	Fabless	Bluetooth, Wifi, Low Power Cellular
ScaleFlux	United States	Fabless	NVMe SSD, SoC

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Notes:

• Pure-play foundries – They specialize in foundry services. They may or may not offer design services to third parties, as well as mask (photomask) making, semiconductor packaging and testing services, which can also be outsourced to other companies. An example is TSMC, which offers design, testing and packaging services, TCE photomasks, which offers only mask making services, and ChipMOS, which offers only packaging and testing services.
• IDMs (integrated device manufacturers) – They may or may not offer foundry services.
• Fabless suppliers – They do not offer foundry services. They may or may not offer design services to third parties.

Manufacturers headquartered in the following places are the sales leaders in the pure-play foundry, IDM (integrated device manufacturing), fabless manufacturing and OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing) sectors of the industry.^[36]

More information Rank, Foundry ...

Rank	Foundry	IDM	Fabless	OSAT
1	Taiwan	United States	United States	Taiwan
2	United States	South Korea	Taiwan	United States
3	China	Japan	China	China
4	South Korea	European Union	European Union	Singapore
5	Israel	Taiwan	Japan	Japan

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Manufacturers headquartered in the United States have fabrication plants across the world, including over 50% in the Americas, 39% in the Asia-Pacific region (including 9% in Japan), and 9% in Europe.^[36]

• Electronic design automation
• Electronics and semiconductor manufacturing industry in India
• Electronics and semiconductor manufacturing industry in Japan
• List of EDA companies
• List of semiconductor fabrication plants
• Semiconductor consolidation
• Semiconductor device fabrication
• Semiconductor fabrication plant
• Semiconductor Industry Association
• Semiconductor industry in India
• Semiconductor industry in Japan
• Semiconductor industry in Taiwan
• Semiconductor industry in China
• Semiconductor industry in South Korea
• Transistor count