Megatrends Drive 200mm Fab Renaissance

Strategies to Maximize “More than Moore” Foundry Growth and Profitability

Mike Noonen
7/14/2017 02:31 PM EDT

The past year has seen a resurgent interest in 200mm fabrication. In this paper, I will discuss why this is and answer the question, "Can 200mm fabs have a profitable future?"

I will also share some of my ideas to maximize profitable growth for mature “More than Moore” foundries. These ideas were shaped by my experience at Globalfoundries and managing several fabless companies.

Why the renewed interest in 200mm?

From my experience at Globalfoundries, I realized that leading edge process technology was becoming less and less affordable. This shaped my “Law of Process Scaling Economics.”

Simply put, as transistor scaling advances, development costs climb dramatically, decreasing the number of customers who can afford the technology. These costs are well understood and documented such as fab construction, semi equipment, triple & quadruple patterning, etc. Less understood and recognized are the costs of intellectual property such as cores, memory, interconnect and the associated validation costs.

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