Real men have fabs... or do they?
"Real men have fabs." AMD founder Jerry Sanders made the point—in blunt, politically incorrect fashion—that maintaining control over IC manufacturing was crucial for a top-tier semiconductor company. The fabless semiconductor community heartily disagrees. In fact, proponents of the fabless business model often quote Sanders to highlight the folly of not following their strategy. Even Sander's own AMD eventually spun out its manufacturing capability with the "asset light" or "asset smart" strategy that led to the creation of Globalfoundries.
Except for Intel and the memory vendors, semicos who didn't take up the fabless or at least fab-light mantra were ridiculed. Process technology began to be viewed as commoditized and unable to provide a competitive advantage. Continuing down the integrated device manufacturer path was a sure path to bankruptcy. At least that became the conventional wisdom.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- MIL-STD-1553 Controller IP
- UFS 5.x Device IP
- UCIe 3.x Controller IP
- Ethernet 800G PCS IP
- CHI to UCIe Bridge IP
Related Blogs
- Intel says fabless model collapsing... really?
- Foundry Model Busted: Will Apple Fab?
- Is Toshiba Going Fabless?
- Qualcomm, AMD head top 25 fabless IC suppliers for 2009; Taiwan firms finish strong!
Latest Blogs
- CDM Dependence on Device Capacitance
- What the Cyber Resilience Act means for the future of chip design
- When Your IP Vendor Has Operated 150,000 Base Stations: Introducing Viettel Semiconductor
- Relationship between architecture and validation in system design
- The Post-Quantum Cryptography Mandate: Building Cryptographically Agile Systems for the Quantum Era