What is a semiconductor foundry?

A foundry is the semiconductor industry term for a factory that manufactures chips. When a fab produces ASICs for other companies (not its own designs), it is typically called a foundry. Examples include SkyWater, TSMC, and Global Foundries.

What is the history of the SkyWater foundry?

The SkyWater facility was originally established by Control Data Corporation (CDC) in the 1980s, then acquired by Cypress Semiconductor in 1991. SkyWater spun off from Cypress in 2017 with private equity backing from Oxbow Industries.

What is the difference between a fab and a foundry?

All chips come from fabrication plants (fabs), but the term foundry is specifically used when the fab manufactures chips designed by other companies rather than its own in-house designs.

Foundry

Suggest an improvement

November 13, 2020

Foundry is the fancy semiconductor word for factory. You have to admit, silicon foundry does sound cool.

Another term used for this is a ‘fabrication plant’ or ‘fab’. All chips come from fabs, but when a fab is used to produce ASICs for other companies (ie the company that owns the fab is not the one that designed the chip) then it is typically referred to as a foundry. SkyWater, TSMC, Global Foundries are foundries that produce chips for many different ASIC design houses.

SkyWater foundry

From SkyWater’s website

The SkyWater facility was originally established by Minnesota based Control Data Corporation (CDC) in the 1980s. The CDC fab was acquired by Cypress Semiconductor in 1991. During the Cypress era, the facility was expanded and upgraded multiple times, keeping pace with Moore’s Law into the late 2000s and was known for being a US-based production facility that was competitive with Asian-based fabs. SkyWater spun-off from Cypress in 2017 with private equity backing from Minnesota based Oxbow Industries.

Course feedback

For a very long time I’ve been fascinated by ASICs and have been close to them in my professional life as well, but not really as much into the detail as I would want. It’s been a fascination since grad school at least, so I've been interested in seeing more open source alternatives crop up, and now with the skywater PDK and OpenLane it seemed like the right time. It’s still a bit hard to get the motivation to get started, it feels like a bit of a hurdle so when I saw this course I just jumped right on it. It felt like a perfect way to get started.

Klas Nordmark (digital course)