I went to Charters site and was looking at a financial statement for Q3
2006, they break info down for their 5 fabs and I found this
interesting.
9% of their revenue comes from 350nm or LARGER !!
15% is from 250nm to 350nm
13% is from 180nm to 250nm
1% is 150nm to 180nm
25% is 130nm to 150nm
29% is 90nm and below
So it appears the larger sizes are still in use for a lot of different
semiconductors, but i was really surprised to see larger then 350nm !!
This actually shouldn't be all that surprising, keeping in mind the
nature of Chartered's business. First off, a lot of chips really
don't require anything more advanced than 350nm. Plenty of ASICs run
at low clock speeds and don't have any power restrictions that are too
stringent. As such, they can be built on damn near any manufacturing
process, so why shouldn't Chartered make use of equipment they already
have?
Often one of the main reasons why a contract IC maker like Chartered
will switch to a more advanced process is NOT for performance (like
what AMD and Intel are after) but rather so that they can cram more
dies on a given silicon wafer. Generally speaking the more advanced
processes SHOULD be cheaper in the long run, but they have to balance
that off with the cost of buying new equipment, ramping up production
and especially validating everything once it's all working. This is a
VERY expensive proposition, and sometimes it is simply not worth it
for a given manufacturing run. If the volume is only being measured
in hundreds of thousands rather than millions, than it's probably
easier for Chartered to ONLY validate it on a single manufacturing
process.
The other thing to keep in mind is that these chips are being produced
under a contract. Some of these contracts will specifically state
that EVERY chip will be 100% exactly the same for the entire life of
the product. If a company is building a product with a 10-year life
cycle, they will probably want chips produced today to be exactly the
same as the very first chip that was produced 10 years ago.
Remember, a LOT of what Chartered makes will probably NEVER see the
inside of anything that we might call a "computer". PCs, servers,
workstations and whatnot might get a lot of both press AND revenue
from IC production, but they definitely do not get the volume. Only a
small percentage of the world's ICs show up in what we would normally
call a "computer".
