Weird Old Foundry Industry - Mannerisms

Only 4 out of 18 pure-play foundries can make leading edge ICs & only 4 others can make 90nm chips via @electronicsnews

The $30 billion silicon foundry industry is weird. Only four companies out of 18 pure-play foundries can make leading edge ICs and only four others can make 90nm chips, points out IC Insights. 'In 2012, TSMC and Globalfoundries were in high-volume production of devices using 28nm feature sizes,' says IC Insights, 'the process technology gap between the other significant pure-play IC foundries and the leading-edge producers is enormous.' Leaving aside the Big Four - TSMC, Globalfoundries, UMC and SMIC - there are only four other foundries - TowerJazz, Grace/HHNEC, Dongbu, and Xinxin - expected to be able to produce ICs using ≤90nm feature sizes in 2012, and this production is likely to be relatively limited, says IC Insights. Nonetheless these 14 'non-major' IC foundries are forecast to account for $4.6 billion in sales, or about 15% of the total pure-play IC foundry market...

Full article: http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semi...