Reshoring Semiconductor Manufacturing

By SemiWiki

June 10, 2013

So where in the world do you think semiconductor manufacturing is increasing the fastest? OK, Taiwan, that was pretty easy. But in second place, with over 20% of the world's semiconductor equipment capital investment is the US. Growing faster than Europe, China, Japan and equal with Korea.

This was not the case half a dozen years ago. Intel was building its first fab in China at Dalian. AMD was ramping Dresden (Germany). Most semiconductor companies were transitioning to fab-lite models with modern processes being manufactured in Asia, and old fabs being milked using non-leading-edge processes. It seemed inevitable that semiconductor manufacturing would mostly be outsourced just like most other manufacturing.

And then suddenly it wasn't.

To read the full article, click here