Mark LaPedus reports in his article in EETimes about TI’s approach towards IC manufacturing – while bolstering its in-house effort in analog production, TI is shifting more of its logic based work & process flow to foundries.
TI is adopting a 3 pronged approach based on its product categories - At the 65-nm node, TI has three foundry partners for its wireless chips: Chartered, TSMC and UMC. For wireless chips at 45 nm, TI will continue to use UMC and TSMC. For DSPs, TI develops the processes & makes its own 65nm DSP. However it will rope in TSMC too for the next node. TI has been manufacturing Sparc processors for Sun; a foundry, probably UMC, will take over production at 45nm.
Shifting the responsibility of digital processes to outside foundries, while focusing on analog processes for in-house manufacturing does seem to be the right direction, especially now when the production costs & risks are escalating. However, this is not an all together new approach. If I recollect well, STMicroelectronics had followed this approach along with TSMC. While the base/digital process was same across the two companies, STM developed its own spin-offs e.g. analog, high power, RF for and based on its market requirements.
The advantages are: risk sharing (in certain cases, offloading) in base process, retaining its niche in customized or spin-off processes and having the second source options when capacity is needed.
The article mentions that by using leading-edge foundries, fabless Qualcomm Inc. has been able to close the manufacturing gap with rival TI. I would say that it wasn’t just using leading edge foundries; it was close co-operation with multiple leading edge foundries coupled with the adoption of what it termed as Integrated Fabless Manufacturing Strategy (IFM) that helped Qualcomm. As I noted in my earlier post, "Fabless Qualcomm zooms to next node", (incidentally a comment on another article by the same author!) Qualcomm developed its own virtual manufacturing organization.
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What exactly is "analog productions" and "logic (digital) processes" in IC manufacturing ?
"Qualcomm developed its own virtual manufacturing organization."
This sounds interesting !!
Analog designs have their specific process requirements e.g. accuracy/precision, noise immunity etc. This is implemented through various process methodologies e.g shallow trench isolation, triple well etc. In addition, special structures like certain PLLs, certain resistors & caps may need specific process tuning for their implementation. In addition, technology may be bipolar, Silicon Germanium (as opposed to digital cmos). These and other features are implemented through what is generically called analog process
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