A semiconductor foundry is a place where the manufacturing of silicon wafers takes place. These foundries in the contemporary times are at the core of the modern society, as nearly everything that is used by the people in their day-to-day life is electronic and is composed of chips, which needs to be made somewhere.

These foundries are made because of the to the fast-increasing requirement for semiconductor devices at a global level, which powered the electronics sector toward larger and better fabrication plants, where economies of scale really turn out to be valuable.

Foundries are built in numerous places at a global level. But as many of you would be familiar that most of the big ones are in the region of APAC, more specifically in Taiwan and China.

 Different Models of a Semiconductor Foundry

There are 2 types of models for semiconductor fabs or foundry, a pure-play and a non-pure-play foundry.

Firstly, talking about a non-pure-play foundry, it is a company that offers foundry services but separately they also produce and sell ICs of their own.

On the other hand, talking of pure-play semiconductor foundries, these are producing semiconductors as a service for other corporations: fabless semiconductor companies, IDMs, and every now and then product companies for example Apple that is manufacturing its own chips. TSMC is the major pure-play foundry all over the globe.

Semiconductors produced by a semiconductor foundry have a distinct size. The key sizes of the semiconductors in the current scenario are 300mm and 200mm.

Where the Concept of a Semiconductor Foundry Started?

At the start, there were no specialized semiconductor foundries. As the production of semiconductors was limited and expensive as well. Foundries were mad with an intention of making more and reasonably priced electronics to satisfy the increasing demand.

Firstly, most semiconductor companies owned their own foundries. The first shift happened when companies discovered that they had additional capacity in their own foundries since a larger semiconductor foundry will be larger than the requirements. Congruently, other companies might have the contradictory problem, they did not build a sufficiently big foundry, or they were late in the construction, and the demand was more than supply.

Semiconductor companies bought and sold chips from each other to meet their needs. This was known as the foundry business. Likewise, semiconductor companies with lacks would take their designs to other companies with excess capacity and have them mass-produced for them.

Then, it was realized by some companies that there is no need to own a foundry for the manufacturing of chips. These corporations would buy wafers. These companies were called fabless semiconductor companies. Semiconductor companies with foundries were known as IDMs.

Coming to a Concrete Conclusion

It is because of the increasing usage of ICS in vehicles all over the world, the demand for semiconductor foundry is on the rise. This trend will continue in the years to come as well, with the total value of the industry to reach 236.3 billion by the end of this decade.