STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics is a French-Italian multinational electronics and semiconductors manufacturer headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland. The company resulted from the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies in 1987: """Thomson Semiconducteurs""" of France and """SGS Microelettronica [it]""" of Italy. It is commonly called "ST". While STMicroelectronics corporate headquarters and the headquarters for EMEA region are based in the Canton of Geneva, the holding company, STMicroelectronics N.V. is incorporated in the Netherlands. The company's US headquarters is in Coppell, Texas. Headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region is in Singapore whilst Japan and Korea operations are headquartered  in Tokyo. The company headquarters for the China region is in Shanghai. History. ST was formed in 1987 by the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies: Italian ""SGS Microelettronica"" (where SGS stands for ""Società Generale Semiconduttori"", "Semiconductors' General Company"), and French ""Thomson Semiconducteurs"", the semiconductor arm of Thomson: "SGS Microelettronica" originated in 1972 from a previous merger of two companies: "Thomson Semiconducteurs" was created in 1982 by the French government's widespread nationalization of industries. It included: At the time of the merger of these two companies in 1987, the newborn corporation was named "SGS-THOMSON" but took its  current name in May 1998 following Thomson’s sale of its shares. After its creation ST was ranked 14th among the top 20 semiconductor suppliers with sales of around US$850 million. The company has participated in the consolidation of the semiconductor industry since its formation, with acquisitions including: On December 8, 1994, the company completed its initial public offering on the Paris and New York stock exchanges. Owner Thomson SA sold its stake in the company in 1998 when the company also listed on the Italian Bourse in Milan. In 2002, Motorola and TSMC joined ST and Philips in  a new technology partnership. The Crolles 2 Alliance was created with a new 12" wafer manufacturing facility located in Crolles, France. By 2005, ST was ranked fifth, behind Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Toshiba, but ahead of Infineon, Renesas, NEC, NXP Semiconductors, and Freescale. The company was the largest European semiconductors supplier, ahead of Infineon and NXP. Early in 2007, ""NXP Semiconductors"" (formerly "Philips Semiconductors") and ""Freescale"" (formerly "Motorola Semiconductors") decided to stop their participation in Crolles 2 Alliance. Under the terms of the agreement the Alliance came to an end on December 31, 2007. On May 22, 2007, ST  and Intel created a joint venture in the memory application called Numonyx: this new company merged ST and "Intel Flash Memory" activities. Semiconductor market consolidation continued with ST and NXP announcing on April 10, 2008, the creation of a new joint venture of their mobile activities, with ST owning 80% of the new company and NXP 20%. This joint venture began on August 20, 2008. On February 10, 2009, ST Ericsson, a joint venture bringing together "ST-NXP Wireless" and "Ericsson Mobile Platforms", was established. ""ST Ericsson"" was a multinational manufacturer of wireless products and semiconductors, supplying to mobile device  manufacturers. ST-Ericsson was a 50/50 joint venture of STMicroelectronics and Ericsson established on February 3, 2009, and dissolved on August 2, 2013. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it was a fabless company, outsourcing semiconductor manufacturing to foundry companies. In 2011, ST announced the creation of a joint lab with Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. The lab will focus on research and innovation in bio-robotics, smart systems and microelectronics. Past collaborations with Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies included DustBot, a platform that integrated self-navigating "service robots" for waste collection. Shareholders. As of December 31, 2014, the shareholders were: Manufacturing  facilities. Unlike fabless semiconductor companies, STMicroelectronics owns and operates its own semiconductor wafer fabs. The company owned five 8 inch (200 mm) wafer fabs and one 12 inch (300 mm) wafer fab in 2006. Most of the production is scaled at 0.18 µm, 0.13 µm, 90 nm and 65 nm (measurements of transistor gate length). STMicroelectronics also owns back-end plants, where silicon dies are assembled and bonded into plastic or ceramic packages. Major sites include: Grenoble, France. Grenoble is one of the company's most important R&D centres, employing around 4,000 staff. The Polygone site employs 2,200 staff and  is one of the historical bases of the company (ex SGS). All the historical wafer fab lines are now closed but the site hosts the headquarters of many divisions (marketing, design, industrialization) and an important R&D center, focused on silicon and software design and fab process development. The Crolles site hosts a and a fab and was originally built as a common R&D center for submicrometre technologies as part of the 1990 "Grenoble 92" partnership between SGS-Thomson and CNET, the R&D center of French telecom company France Telecom. The fab, known as Crolles 1, is the company's first  and was built as part of a 1991 partnership between SGS-Thomson and Philips to develop new manufacturing technologies. Crolles 1 was opened on September 9, 1993 by Gérard Longuet, French minister for industry, and Alain Carignon, mayor of Grenoble. The fab was inaugurated by French president Jacques Chirac, on February 27, 2003. It includes a R&D center which focuses on developing new nanometric technology processes for 90 nm to 32 nm scale using wafers and it was developed for "The Crolles 2 Alliance". This alliance of STMicroelectronics, TSMC, NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips semiconductor) and Freescale (formerly Motorola semiconductor) partnered  in 2002 to develop the facility and to work together on process development. The technologies developed at the facility were also used by global semiconductor foundry TSMC of Taiwan, allowing TSMC to build the products developed in Crolles on behalf of the Alliance partners who required such foundry capacity. A new fab is under construction since 2015. Rousset, France. Employing around 3,000 staff, Rousset hosts several division headquarters including smartcards, microcontrollers, and EEPROM as well as several R&D centers. Rousset also hosts an 8-inch (200 mm) fab, which was opened on May 15, 2000 by French prime minister Lionel  Jospin. The site opened in 1979 as a fab operated by Eurotechnique, a joint venture between Saint-Gobain of France and National Semiconductor of the US. Rousset was sold to Thomson-CSF in 1982 as part of the French government's 1981–82 nationalization of several industries. As part of the nationalisation, a former Thomson plant in the center of Aix-en-Provence operating since the 1960s was closed and staff were transferred to the new Rousset site. The original fab was upgraded into and later fab in 1996. It is now being shut down. In 1988, a small group of  employees from the Thomson Rousset plant (including the director, Marc Lassus) founded a start-up company, Gemalto (formerly known as Gemplus), which became a leader in the smartcard industry. Tours, France. Employing 1,500 staff, this site hosts a fab and R&D centers. Milan, Italy. Employing 6,000 staff, the Milan facilities match Grenoble in importance. Agrate Brianza employs around 4,000 staff and is a historical base of the company (ex SGS). The site has several fab lines (including an fab) and an R&D center. Castelletto, employs 300 to 400 staff and hosts some divisions and R&D centers. Update-2012: Numonyx JV (with  Intel) is acquired by Micron. As such, R2 Fab (Agrate previous R&D 200mm Fab) is currently a Micron entity Catania, Italy. The Catania plant in Sicily employs 5,000 staff and hosts several R&D centers and divisions, focusing on flash memory technologies as well as two fabs. The plant was launched in 1961 by ATES to supply under licensing to RCA of the US and initially using germanium. The site's two major wafer fabs are a fab, opened in April 1997 by then-Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and a fab that has never been completed and which was  transferred in its current state to "Numonyx" in 2008. Caserta, Italy. Stmicro eSIM and SIM production facility for embedded form factor eSIM. Kirkop, Malta. As of 2010, ST employed some 1,500 people in Kirkop, making it the largest private sector employer, and the country's leading exporter. Singapore. In 1970, SGS created its first assembly back-end plant in Singapore, in the area of Toa Payoh. Then in 1981, SGS decided to build a wafer fab in Singapore. The Singapore technical engineers have been trained in Italy and the fab of Ang Mo Kio started to produce its first wafers  in 1984. Converted up to fab, this is now an important wafer fab of the group. Ang Mo Kio also hosts some design centers. The site currently employs 6000 staff. Update-2012: Numonyx JV (with Intel) is acquired by Micron in 2010. As such, AMK8 Fab (200mm HVM Fab) is currently a Micron entity. AMK5 and AMK6 remains to be STM entities. Update-2019: AMK8 has been reacquired by STM from Micron. Tunis, Tunisia. Application, design and support. about 110 employees. Divisions: MCD Bouskoura, Morocco. Founded in 1979 as a radiofrequency products facility, the Bouskoura site now hosts back-end manufacturing  activity, which includes chip testing and packaging. Other sites. Closing sites. The Phoenix, Arizona 8 inch (200 mm) fab, the Carrollton, Texas 6 inch (150 mm) fab, and the Ain Sebaa, Morocco fab are beginning rampdown plans, and are destined to close by 2010. The Casablanca, Morocco site consists of two assembly parts (Bouskoura and Aïn Sebaâ) and totals around 4000 employees. It was opened in the 1960s by Thomson. The Bristol, United Kingdom site employing well over 300 at its peak (in 2001/2) but was ramped down to approx. 150 employees at close by early 2014. The Ottawa, Ontario , Canada plant (approx. 450 employees) will close down by 2013 end.