Fabless manufacturing

Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or fab) to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclusively, located in the United States, China, and Taiwan. Fabless companies can benefit from lower capital costs while concentrating their research and development resources on the end market. Some fabless companies and pure play foundries (like TSMC) may offer integrated-circuit design services to third parties. Prior to the 1980s, the semiconductor industry was vertically integrated. Semiconductor companies owned and operated their own silicon-wafer fabrication facilities and developed their own process technology for manufacturing their chips. These companies also carried out the assembly and testing of their own chips. As with most technology-intensive industries, the silicon manufacturing process presents high barriers to entry into the market, especially for small start-up companies. But integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) had excess production capacity. This presented an opportunity for smaller companies, relying on IDMs, to design but not manufacture silicon. These conditions underlay the birth of the fabless business model. Engineers at new companies began designing and selling ICs without owning a fabrication plant. Simultaneously, the foundry industry was established by Dr. Morris Chang with the founding of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). Foundries became the cornerstone of the fabless model, providing a non-competitive manufacturing partner for fabless companies. The co-founders of the first fabless semiconductor company, LSI Computer Systems, Inc. (LSI/CSI) LSI/CSI, worked together at General Instrument Microelectronics (GIM) in the 1960s. In 1969 GIM was hired to develop three full custom CPU circuits for Control Data Corporation (CDC). These CPU ICs operated at 5 MHz (state of the art at the time) and were incorporated in the CDC Computer 469.