Model has its skeptics Fabless veteran Mike Hackworth said he, too, is skeptical of the emerging model, and warned that would-be fabless ASIC companies and their potential customers should approach the market carefully. Anyone who's been in this domain understands there's a very tight linkage between design and process, said Hackworth, chairman of Cirrus Logic Inc., Austin, Texas, one of the industry's first fabless chip companies. We knew from the beginning that at the end of the day, our real value was creating the silicon architecture. Skeptics also questioned the ability of a small fabless ASIC company to secure ample wafer capacity to support its customers. In the current market, getting a guarantee of wafers wouldn't be difficult.
Foundries say yes.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Hsinchu, places high value on its emerging customers, which might some day become top-tier players, said Roger Fisher, vice president of corporate marketing. However, Hackworth noted that when wafers were scarce during the 1994-95 boom, Cirrus was squeezed out of factories as foundries made room for new customers willing to buy capacity at a premium. Competition for capacity will increase as IDMs look to foundries to balance their internal manufacturing ability, said Dataquest analyst Bryan Lewis. Although it's possible to make agreements with foundries to guarantee access to capacity, these deals may be torn up when capacity is overbooked and a big customer comes calling, he said.