Company: TSEM
Filing Date: 2025-04-30
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001178913-25-001537
Chunk: 33

Company: TOWER SEMICONDUCTOR LTD
Filing Date: 2025-04-30
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 3
Chunk 33
---
 Foundries
may also offer customers competitive complementary services through design, testing, and other technical services. Foundry services
are used by nearly all major semiconductor companies in the world, including IDMs, as part of a dual-source, risk-diversification and
cost effectiveness strategy.

Semiconductor suppliers face increasing demand for new products
that provide higher performance, greater functionality and smaller form factors at lower prices - all features that require increasingly
complex ICs. The industry has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of applications that incorporate semiconductors. Further,
in order to compete successfully, semiconductor suppliers must minimize the time it takes to bring a product to market. As a result, fabless
companies and IDMs have focused more on their core competencies, design and intellectual property development, and tend to outsource manufacturing
to foundries.

For many years, the two basic functional technologies for semiconductor
products have been digital and analog. Digital semiconductors provide critical processing power and have helped enable many of the computing
and communication advances of recent years. Analog semiconductors monitor and manipulate real world signals such as sound, light, pressure,
motion, temperature, electrical current and radio waves, for use in a wide variety of end products such as digital still cameras, x-ray
medical applications, flat panel displays, personal computers, cellular handsets, smartphone, telecommunications equipment, consumer applications,
automotive and industrial products. Analog-digital, or mixed-signal, semiconductors combine analog and digital devices which can process
both analog and digital signals.

Integrating analog and digital components on a single, mixed-signal
semiconductor enables the development of smaller, more highly integrated, power-efficient, feature-rich and cost-effective semiconductor
devices but presents significant design and manufacturing challenges. For example, combining high-speed digital circuits with sensitive
analog circuits on a single, mixed-signal semiconductor can increase electromagnetic interference and power consumption, both of which
cause a higher amount of heat to be dissipated and decrease the overall performance of the semiconductor. Challenges associated with the
design and manufacture of mixed-signal semiconductors increase as the industry moves toward more advanced process geometries. Numerous
emerging applications require 3D integration, in particular, high precision wafer bonding. Challenges related to enhanced reliability,
e. g., automotive products, dictate more stringent demands to the fabrication processes. As a result, analog and mixed-signal semiconductors
can be complex to manufacture and typically require sophisticated design