Company: AOSL
Filing Date: 2025-08-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-041297
Chunk: 60

Company: ALPHA & OMEGA SEMICONDUCTOR Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-08-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 60
---
 develop and manufacture our products.  Pursuant to an agreement with the JV Company and other shareholders of the JV Company, the JV Company is committed to provide us with a specified level of monthly wafer production capacity.

Our industry 

Semiconductors are electronic devices that perform a variety of functions, such as converting or controlling signals, processing data and delivering or managing power.  The functionality and performance of semiconductors have generally increased over time, while size and cost have generally decreased.  These advances have led to a proliferation of more complex semiconductors being used in a wide variety of consumer, computing, communications and industrial markets and have contributed to the growth of the semiconductor industry.  Regulations governing energy efficiency have accelerated this process in many applications.

Analog semiconductors

The semiconductor industry is segmented into analog and digital.  Analog semiconductors process light, sound, motion, radio waves and electrical currents and voltages.  In contrast, digital semiconductors process binary signals represented by a sequence of ones and zeros.

As a result of these fundamental differences, the analog semiconductor industry is distinct from the digital semiconductor industry in terms of the complexity of design and the length of product cycle.  Improper interactions between analog circuit elements can potentially render an electronic system inoperable.  Experienced engineers engaged in the design process are necessary because computer-aided design cannot fully model the behavior of analog circuitry.  Therefore, experienced analog engineers with requisite knowledge are in great demand but short supply worldwide.  In addition, analog semiconductors tend to have a longer product life cycle because original design manufacturers, or ODMs, and original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs typically design the analog portions of a system to span multiple generations of products.  Once designed into an application, the analog portion is rarely modified because even small changes to the analog portion can trigger unanticipated consequences in other components, resulting in system instability.

Power semiconductors

Power semiconductors are a subset of the analog semiconductor sector with their own set of characteristics unique to system power architecture and function.  Power semiconductors transfer, manage and switch electricity to deliver the appropriate amount of voltage or current to a broad range of electronic systems and also protect electronic systems from damage resulting from excessive or inadvertent electrical charges.

Power semiconductors can be either discrete devices, which typically comprise only a few transistors or diodes, or ICs, which incorporate a greater number of transistors.  The function of