silicon wafer manufacturing - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2016, 01:39:51 pm
content: Hi,Assume that I have designed a simple chip, I just wanted to manufacture it,I need 90nm manufacturing capability, where is the cheapest place to order them? what sort of prices should I expect? anyone with the experience would enlighten me very well,Thanks in advance.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2016, 03:27:13 pm
content: http://cmp.imag.fr/products/ic/?p=prices2016No 90nm there but you can get an idea of the prices.Given your location, tryhttp://www.wafercat.com/

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2016, 04:07:26 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on April 16, 2016, 03:27:13 pmIts worth noting that although CMP distribute the design kits without charge, they only seem to support Cadence.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 16, 2016, 08:24:37 pm
content: Quote from: ali_asadzadeh on April 16, 2016, 01:39:51 pmHiHow many full wafers do you need a week and for how many years?Do you need them packaged or are bare die ok?Do you need any testing done? If so what sort of testing (microwave / digital / precision linear)?What sort of chip is it (digital / linear / RF / optical / ...) ?What sort of material do you need (silicon ... something fast .... something exotic ...) ?Do you care about a $250K mask set charge up front (or $1M) ?Do you care about a $100K test setup charge up front?Lots of questions, not many answers. The bottom line is always that there are upfront costs. You can always pay them as a lump sum. In some cases they can be folded into that first PO for 20 wafers a week for the next 9 months. If your volumes aren't in the "silly nonsense" range, you can count on that mask set only lasting for just so long. A few years from now, you will get a bill for a new set when the line upgrades. Either you pay the bill or you find somebody else (and pay them a mask charge). Been there / done that a lot of times.Bob

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2016, 08:33:11 pm
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on April 16, 2016, 08:24:37 pmHe specified 90nm. He's not going to get a mask set for $250k.

author: l0wside
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2016, 09:27:00 am
content: The link to cmp.imag.fr has changed:http://cmp.imag.fr/spip.php?page=article&id_article=61They do MPW runs, i.e. they put a large number of different designs on a single wafer, which is perfect for prototyping. The smallest feature size they offer is the ST 28nm CMOS process. If you can live with a larger feature size, prices start at a few kEUR for 25 parts.For mass production, this is not helpful. An IC design is tightly coupled to the IC process (unless it is purely digital). If the TO has thus managed to get his IC up and running with CMP, he will need to negotiate with either AMS or ST to mass produce the IC. This is where the upfront cost comes into play.Unless you either produce critical high-value components or huge volumes, a discrete solution is usually the cheaper solution.Max

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 11, 2016, 11:41:53 am
content: HiConsider that the output of most MPW runs are bare die. Unless you happen to have a wire bonder, the parts will need to get packaged. That's not a massive cost, it is something that may impact performance if the part is running at RF or microwaves ...Bob

author: l0wside
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2016, 11:47:02 am
content: CMP even has listed packaging cost. Around 70 EUR for SO8, IIRC.Not clear if this is the price for a single part or the full run of 25 parts.Max

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2016, 12:26:45 pm
content: Just curious - what its it about masks that makes them so expensive ?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2016, 02:18:49 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on May 11, 2016, 12:26:45 pmNot so long ago mask costs were not so bad. You could set up a run of masked ROM parts for a few thousand dollars, which was mostly the cost of the single mask required. As geometries become finer the prices have gone through the roof. At the finest geometries its pretty expensive to even make the one mask you needed to mask ROM. Minimising mask sets is now a major driver in most fine geometry IC development work. Bugs will often stay in chips just to avoid the cost of a metal layer fix, and if you need an ALR (all levels revision) heads might roll.A mask needs to be a lot crisper than the things you print from it, and you can't make it by a printing process. It takes a considerable run time on some exotic equipment.

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2016, 12:43:11 pm
content: Thanks for the info, I wonder how much money do you need to enter the business?is 1M$ enough? we have lots of fab-less companies, and the question is if the mask prices are so high why on earth they sell 555 so damn cheap! who buys the damn thing now! so I guess the volume shouldn't be that high!

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 15, 2016, 01:14:17 pm
content: Quote from: ali_asadzadeh on May 15, 2016, 12:43:11 pmHiThe volume on 555's probably is pretty low by now. I would guess it's dropped below the 100,000 per day level. Since it is done on an "analog" rather than a digital process, the masks don't go obsolete quite as fast.Bob

author: ion
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2016, 02:28:06 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on May 11, 2016, 12:26:45 pmI read some time ago that for the finer processes they generate interference patterns to expose features smaller than the UV wavelength. I'd imagine getting masks to do that right isn't easy.

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2016, 02:42:09 pm
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on May 15, 2016, 01:14:17 pmLot of IC' comes from NOS wafer stocks, particularly old analog designs and cmos logic.Just go backwards and ask for processes used when they was obsoleted.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 16, 2016, 08:39:36 pm
content: Quote from: MT on May 15, 2016, 02:42:09 pmHiAt some point the answer will be "we no longer support that process, all the equipment has been scrapped" ... I've gotten a number of those messages over the years.Bob

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2016, 11:21:50 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on May 11, 2016, 12:26:45 pmMostly the cost of mask making machines, although the ultra pure materials used are not cheap.Also, they have to be perfect, so the yield isn't that high.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2016, 02:17:14 am
content: Quote from: ali_asadzadeh on May 15, 2016, 12:43:11 pmIn addition to the other answers above, realize that the feature size on a 555 is orders of magnitude larger than you are requesting, making masks easy and robust. Large volume market, low die size, large feature size so high yield, low pin count.... Everything about the 555 makes it cheap to build. If your part shares many of these features it may also sell cheap and still sell at a profit.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 12:37:38 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on May 17, 2016, 02:17:14 amHiWell you would *think* it would work that way. Oddly enough ... not so much. If you take a design at (say) 1 micron an run it on a process that is 8X higher resolution, you get to make masks for the 8X process. That comes with the normal price tag on the 8X higher resolution process masks. Indeed there are a bucketful of things that change other than the resolution that pretty much force this to happen. If it was just going to 8X resolution on the same old 3" wafers done with the same old handling gear, the impact might not be as great.Bob

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 01:02:47 am
content: I haven't done this for a few years so my info may be out of date, but at that time older processes didn't really go away. They disappeared into secondary markets. So you frequently can get older stuff. Not as cheap as it once was, but still better than bleeding edge stuff.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 01:05:54 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on May 18, 2016, 01:02:47 amHiAt least on the stuff we have done, when you move fab's, the masks didn't move. You paid a new mask charge for the new line. You might not have to do a full up design to drive those masks, but you still shoot new ones.Bob

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 01:33:51 am
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on May 18, 2016, 01:05:54 amSemiconductor production equipment comes from a very small group of suppliers. You'd think there would only be a couple of forms in which the masks are needed, but it doesn't seem to work out like that. Moving fabs generally requires a new mask set. It also requires requalification of the parts, because of processing differences between fabs, but I think most people would expect that.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 01:46:01 am
content: Quote from: coppice on May 18, 2016, 01:33:51 amHiThere is also the sneaky "they cost X if we own the masks and Y if you own the masks". Guess which one the finance guy wants you to pick when you order the masks? If the fab owns the masks ... there is no way you are going to move them (even if you could which I've never been able to do).Bob

author: lgbeno
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 01:48:29 am
content: Have you looked at Mosis? You need to get your chip on a MPW or "Shuttle". Then the mask costs are shared between many die on a reticle. The cost might be $30k (total swag).There are two reasons why chips are cheap, the first is process cost, older technology tends to be cheaper because the equipment is paid off, the process yields well and it probably isn't in as high of demand.The other reason can be that they can just cram so many devices onto a single die, imagine paying $800 to process a wafer and having it give you 10,000 chips. At 100% yield that is 8cents a chip. Of course that never happens and there are other costs besides silicon but you get what I'm saying.BTW, $1M would for sure get you proto silicon at 90nm, it might not get you into production. Depends on what the chip does.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 05:25:06 am
content: Thanks for the info, then the next question is how to enter the business with 1M$, for example what was the strategy of XMOS or other recent companies! I heard that they have started with a similar budget.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 05:41:39 am
content: Quote from: ali_asadzadeh on May 18, 2016, 05:25:06 amXMOS and others didn't enter with 1M$. 1M$ is just the cost of making sample chips with dedicated (rather than mutli-project type shuttle) masks. Designing anything of moderate complexity is a few million more in salary, software licencing, and all the other costs associated with a multi-man year engineering development.

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 10:24:39 am
content: Thanks, so what's the bare minimum prices to enter the business? how chines have entered the business? we have lot's of examples out there with super low prices, like allwinnertech chips, they would sell an A64 Quad-core Cortex-A53 with it's Power management chip only for 5$ maybe the manufacturing cost for them is 2.5U$ so they would sell @ 5$, I guess either they are making trillions of them based on the mask and NRE and silicon and packaging and etc.. costs or they know the way. because a similar part from TI cost at least 10 times more. either they are selling sample prices such high or we have hidden manufacturers in china! the question is how they do it, Would you enlighten me?

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2016, 01:52:06 pm
content: I can't tell you anything about the pricing strategies or costs of either company, but will point out that price is determined by what someone is willing to pay and someone else is willing to sell, not by costs. TI is a known entity which allows them to charge a premium based on confidence that the parts will do what they are claimed to do, and that TI will be there in the future so you can buy either more of a part or a successor part. There may not be any actual differences in either of these factors, but at this time no one can say for sure and decisions have to be made with whatever data is available. A new company often will use price to counteract their lack of reputation and demonstrated business stability. This type of strategy has in many cases caused companies to sell items below cost in order to establish themselves in a market (or to drive competition out of a market). It is an effective strategy if the financial resources exist to execute it.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 19, 2016, 12:08:13 am
content: Quote from: ali_asadzadeh on May 18, 2016, 10:24:39 amHiMinimum cost to enter the business as a fab is about $10B. As a fabless design contractor about $5M plus roughly $10M per design.Bob

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2016, 03:13:30 am
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on May 19, 2016, 12:08:13 amYou could get into the fab business for a lot less than $10B these days. New prices would get you to $10B fairly quickly. However, frequent failures mean there are cheap fabs for sale, down to around 90nm, which are still in great condition. You can get even finer ones, if you find an abandoned DRAM or flash fab.Your fabless costs are about right, unless you aim to work on very simple designs.

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2016, 09:45:28 am
content: Quotehow much? where we should search?

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 19, 2016, 11:36:14 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 19, 2016, 03:13:30 amHiThe problem with buying an abandoned fab is that you are now tied to an obsolete process. Your parts are going to be non-conpetitive compared to the output of a modern line. Unless you have a lot of captive usage of obsolete parts, there's not much point to an obsolete line. There is effectively no way to upgrade an older line, so you are stuck. I've seen a lot of them sit for a few years and then ultimately get sold off in bits and pieces. I've never seen anybody put a new line into one of the sites. There are a bunch of reasons, both technical and non-technical that make this all happen. If you take a look at the business before it shut down, inevitably they were selling stuff below cost and still not filling the line towards the end ...Bob

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2016, 03:53:07 am
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on May 19, 2016, 11:36:14 pmMost new parts are not fabricated in the finest available geometry. Most new MCUs, for example, are in 130nm, 90nm or 65nm. 65nm is still a bit leaky, so it isn't great for ULP MCUs. 130nm and 90nm are pretty much mainstream. Abandoned DRAM fabs are generally finer than this. If your interest is analogue even coarser geometries prevail. Try looking at sales breakdowns from TSMC or UMC. Most of their output, even of new chip designs, is well behind the leading edge.Old fabs left to rot because of the irrelevance of their equipment should be really old ones. You see crazy stuff, like a 130nm fab in Europe repurposed to make solar cells. I guess that fab was available really cheap, because solar cells don't require something that fine. Apart from people with a big emphasis on the leading edge, like Intel, most people still driving forward with their own fab strategy seem to be buying up 2nd hand fabs.Starting up at leading edge is really hard. You can't just buy a fab, new or second hand. You need a lot of R&D to be relevant. No two leading edge processes are the same.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 20, 2016, 12:08:08 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 20, 2016, 03:53:07 amHiHere's the gotcha:You decide to buy a fab. There is a search and you come up with a few dozen alternatives. You fly around looking at each of them. Figure a week or two each. There goes about 4 months.Next up there are the meetings to decide which ones are in the running or not. Inevitably I have one idea, you have another, the "big guy" puts on his poker face and we yack. A month or three later there is a short list of three.Off we go again on more flights to "check the details". We also fly off to chat with the current owners and start working out what a deal actually would look like. Again there goes a couple of months.Back to the big guy and we decide to make an offer for one of them. If you consider all of the debt that we are taking on (and maybe back taxes ...) the deal is in the $200M to $800M range. Back and forth we go and *maybe* there is an agreement or not. If not, we go on to number two on the list. Figure another couple of months each.At this point we have an agreement and not a deal. In come the lawyers and likely the bankers. We'll drop >$10M on that part of the process in various fees. That's well worth it if they find another $200M in debt we get along with the deal.Off we head to a closing and all is great. Hmm .. we've spend at least a year on this so far and may have spent two years. We really are not anywhere near done.Now we have access to all of the "stuff" and can start checking it all out. We find out what works and what needs tweaks and what needs to be replaced. Some of this we spotted earlier, some of it ... not so much. Off we go to start re-equiping the plant to re-purpose it for our needs. If you expect that to complete out in under a year ... good luck. There also is the minor issue of hiring / training / managing a staff to run the place.It's time to start running the full line. We have run partials on some of it so part of the process is worked out. There is still the full run process to calibrate and adjust. Six months to the first real waffer .. doing well.Oddly enough the costs to this point probably are pretty predictable. The "cheap fab" cost a lot to re-equip. The "expensive fab" probably came up faster and cost less to re-equip.====Why all this yack? Is every line exactly correct? (of course not). The point is, you aren't buying a fab today and producing parts next week. You will spend two to four years before you have parts. You can build a fab in less time than this is likely to take. Once you have it up and running, it's not today's geometries that you are competing against. You now are up against whatever they are doing then. You are ramping up from zero and so are they. You have a pile of debt and so do they. Their production cost is ... much less. Hmmm.....You are also competing against a bunch of guys who have already paid off their plant and are running a line at full capacity. Their costs are ... much less. Again a .. hmmm ....Bob

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2016, 01:11:56 pm
content: I agree with everything Bob said, "except". I does depend on what your chip does and what you are competing with. Does your design need high density to compete? Density is a factor (not the only one) in cost to produce, and obviously is necessary if your design requires a huge gate count, but may not be dominant. Is your design something that you can saturate the market with your output? If yes the older fabs might be suitable, but you need to think really hard about whether you can pay back the fab cost with your sales. If no, you will have me too competitors and cost will become a very important factor.As in every thing else the details matter. Remember to work very, very hard to be objective about your design. Pride and overconfidence in the merits of what you are doing can bias your evaluations and result in decisions you rue for years.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2016, 02:50:42 pm
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on May 20, 2016, 12:08:08 pmPersonally I have no idea if it would be viable for a startup to take the route of buying a 2nd hand fab. My experience is of watching well established players buy up the stragglers for their expansion. This is happening quite a lot. They have teams that know what they are doing, and they have processes ready to transplant into the new fab. People who have taken this route as a policy, rather than doing it when a too good to be true opportunity pops up, seems to be keeping their investments low, while meeting their needs in terms of geometries. They try to pick up the fab as it closes, before the rot has started to set in. In some cases they actually close the place, and just transplant all its kit to expand one of their existing fabs. 2nd hand fabs are a "thriving" business.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 20, 2016, 03:44:31 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 20, 2016, 02:50:42 pmHiBuying all the gear in the fab, carting it off, bolting it on your existing line, and leaving the real estate behind is a *very* different process than buying a fab. Generally you can make a deal like that pretty quickly. I've seen it done with a number of fabs. I've done the same thing myself with production lines. The gotcha is that the real estate then stays on the market with "silicon fab" on the listing. What it is instead is an empty building with a bunch of random clean room gear siting around here and there. You can pick it up cheap, it's not a fab ....still may carry the debt and the back taxes of the fab, so watch out.Bob

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2016, 04:12:38 pm
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on May 20, 2016, 03:44:31 pmIf the place carries a lot of debt or tax burden its pretty much dead in the water as a source of either a working fab or equipment. Not every failed fab is irredeemably marred in that way, though. Whole functional fabs do change hands.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 20, 2016, 04:48:37 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 20, 2016, 04:12:38 pmHiFunctional operating fab's most certainly do change hands, but not for the super low prices you sometimes see tossed around. It's the one that the "financial engineers" have spent time on that you want to be careful of. Those kind of shenanigans make giving an exact answer to a "how much does one cost?" more than a bit difficult. Semiconductors have been a cyclical business for as long as they have been an industry. What you paid two years ago may have little bearing on what you pay today or what you might pay in two years. The same is true of the incentive to play stupid games with the debt structure on a sale.Bob

author: lgbeno
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2016, 08:11:07 pm
content: Why would anyone not experienced in foundry buy a fab? For sure not a wise move as a startup! Lets say you want to produce chips, as a startup you need to build volume first to get to the scale where the overhead of the fab is paid by the extra margin of the chips that you would produce.If you intend on on doing a foundry model, business development will be a primary task. How do you convince customers to make a huge investment a trust your quality? You pretty much would need to give your services away for free and even then many people will turn you down.In either case, it is very challenging and 10's of millions before you see a cent of revenue.Chip starts are pretty much always fabless for a reason. $5M to start is probably right. $10M per chip depends on the chip. Very likely if it is big digital & lots of IP & DSM like 40nm or less, I agree. If it is your own IP and something like 130nm, $2M-3M seems do able.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2016, 02:04:15 am
content: Quote from: lgbeno on May 24, 2016, 08:11:07 pmThe successful foundries were started by people who left semiconductor companies with years of experience in their fabs. There are quite a lot of people with deep experience of running fabs who would be very happy to find the financial backing to start up on their own.

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2016, 01:59:29 pm
content: Thanks,lgbeno then how would you enter the business? I agree with you on entering as a fabless company, but being a fabless means that you are just throwing about 80% of your profit a way!

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 25, 2016, 10:18:57 pm
content: Quote from: ali_asadzadeh on May 25, 2016, 01:59:29 pmHiIn most cases, a fabless company keeps 80% of the profit and the fab maybe gets 20%. For that matter, many fabs loose money (thus the number of closed fabs). Most fabless companies make money.Bob

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2016, 03:00:05 am
content: Quote from: uncle_bob on May 25, 2016, 10:18:57 pmI think that's a rather distorted picture. A foundry needs to be very disciplined to make money. So, a few (e.g. TSMC) make good profits, while most make endless losses. There is definitely profit in a very well run fab, but it requires such massive investment, and carries such consequent risks, that most people choose not to play.Its definitely true that you don't need to make wafers to make good profits and grow fast. Look at the original post child for a fabless semiconductor company - Chips and Technologies - they were the fastest growing and most profitable semiconductor company of their day. Some missteps lead them to crash and burn, but it wasn't for a lack of potential profit. Look at Qualcomm today. Very profitable and very large, demonstrating that it isn't just small niche players who can do well without their own fabs. Look at many of the long established semiconductor companies finest geometry parts. Most companies aren't investing in new fabs for these parts any more. They use foundries for their finest geometries, because it makes better economic sense.

author: uncle_bob
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 27, 2016, 02:32:23 am
content: Quote from: coppice on May 26, 2016, 03:00:05 amHiIf the objective is to make money, then about the only chance of a profit starting from zero is a TSMC sized fab. We can debate how many billions (like 10's) of dollars that will cost, but it *is* in the billions no matter how you do it. The fab business is one where the leaders make money and the rest of the crowd does not. Without major investment, you are not going from zero to a leader. Your only real chance is to build out a fab at the latest and greatest feature size and fill it that way.For the same money invested, you can start up a few hundred fabless outfits. The odds all of them making money are slim. The odds on some of them doing well are quite high. The likely hood of the group making more money than a fab is just about 100%. If you do it serially (which you almost have to do), what you learn from setting up the first $100M worth makes you far more likely to do well on the next batch.Bob