A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips. It achieves an advantage by outsourcing the fabrication of the devices to a specialized semiconductor manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry which may have several fabrication facilities, or "fabs". The credit for pioneering the fabless concept is given to Bernie Vonderschmitt of Xilinx and Gordon A. Campbell of Chips and Technologies. For other uses, see Hardware (disambiguation). ... A semiconductor is a solid whose electrical conductivity is in between that of a conductor and that of an insulator, and can be controlled over a wide range, either permanently or dynamically. ... CHiPs is an American television series produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios that aired on NBC from September 15, 1977 to July 17, 1983. ... Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. ... NASAs Glenn Research Center cleanroom. ... A Pure-Play Semiconductor Foundry is a company that does not offer a significant amount of IC products of its own design, but instead focuses on producing ICs for other companies. ... It has been suggested that Pure-play semiconductor foundry be merged into this article or section. ... Bernard (Bernie) Vonderschmitt (October 14, 1923 – June 9, 2004) was an electrical engineer, most noted as a co-founder of leading FPGA producer Xilinx. ... Xilinx, Inc. ... Chips and Technologies was the first fabless semiconductor company, a model developed by its founder Gordon Campbell. ...

A fabless company concentrates its research and development resources on the end market without investing capital resources to stay current in semiconductor process technology. In other words, they are fab-less, and do not own a fab or fabrication facility - instead they rely on pure-play semiconductor foundries to manufacture their semiconductor chips on their behalf. Look up company in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The phrase research and development (also R and D or, more often, R&D), according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, refers to creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use... Look up Market in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Investment is a term with several closely related meanings in finance and economics. ... By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a mastery of technology sufficient to leave the surface of the Earth for the first time and explore space. ... A Pure-Play Semiconductor Foundry is a company that does not offer a significant amount of IC products of its own design, but instead focuses on producing ICs for other companies. ...

In 1994, Jodi Shelton - along with a half a dozen CEOs of fabless companies - established the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) to promote the fabless business model globally. Eventually, the FSA became the global voice for the fabless ecosystem, with over 500 corporate members in 25 countries. In December 2007, the FSA transitioned to the GSA - the Global Semiconductor Alliance.^[1]

History

Prior to the 1980s, the semiconductor industry was vertically integrated. Semiconductor companies owned and operated their own silicon wafer fabrication facilities and developed their own process technology for manufacturing their chips. These companies also performed assembly and test for their chips. It has been suggested that Vertical expansion be merged into this article or section. ...

Meanwhile, with the help of private-equity funding, smaller companies began to form, with experienced engineers exercising their entrepreneurial prowess by establishing their own IC design companies focused on innovative chip solutions.

As with most technology-intensive industries, the silicon manufacturing process was and is cost-prohibitive, especially for these small start-up companies. These companies relied on using excess capacity from Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) to manufacture the chips they were designing. An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products. ...

This was the birth of the fabless business model. Companies were manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs) without the need to own an internal fabrication plant. Simultaneously, the foundry industry was established by Dr. Morris Chang with the founding of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). The foundry industry would become the cornerstone of the fabless model - providing a non-competitive manufacturing supply chain partner for these innovative and pioneering fabless companies. A Pure-Play Semiconductor Foundry is a company that does not offer a significant amount of IC products of its own design, but instead focuses on producing ICs for other companies. ... Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (Traditional Chinese: 台灣積體電路製造股份有限公司, abbrev. ...

The fabless business model was sharply criticized as an opportunitistic "tool" soon after it was established in the 1980s^{[citation needed]}. During the 1990s, however, industry pundits acknowledged the financial success of fabless companies, such as Nvidia, Broadcom, and Xilinx, and such companies as Cyrix produced competitively-priced products, benefitting consumers and driving the global market for computing devices. As of 2007, the fabless model is the preferred business model for the semiconductor industry^{[citation needed]}. Cyrix was a CPU manufacturer that began in 1988 in Richardson, TX as a specialist supplier of high-performance math co-processors for 286 and 386 systems. ...

When FSA was established in 1994, there were only three fabless companies - Cirrus Logic, Adaptec and Xilinx - each with revenues in excess of $250 million. Today in 2007, GSA tracks 10 separate fabless companies that have each surpassed $1 billion in annual revenues.

The model has been further validated by the conversion of major IDMs to a completely fabless model, including (for example) Conexant Systems, Semtech, and most recently, LSI Logic. Today most major IDMs including Freescale, Infineon, Texas Instruments and Cypress Semiconductor have adopted the practice of outsourcing chip manufacturing as a significant manufacturing strategy. An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products. ...

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• Foundry model
• TSMC

Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (Traditional Chinese: 台灣積體電路製造股份有限公司, abbrev. ...

References