American Semiconductor, Inc. is an award winning, on-shore U.S. semiconductor foundry that develops and commercializes process technology. American Semiconductor provides pure-play foundry services for all aspects of wafer fabrication and process development at low cost for low to mid-volumes. Wafer fabrication services are provided for Flexfet™ SOI CMOS process as well as Custom Fabrication for customer defined devices or processes on 200mm SOI or bulk silicon. American Semiconductor is dedicated to providing fast fabrication of designs with maximum protection of our customers' IP.
Privately Held
Founded November, 2001
Corporate
Headquarters, Boise, ID
Engineering - Process, Design, Modeling
Operations / Fab Management
Test & Characterization Cleanroom
Sales, Marketing, Administration
Manufacturing -
San Jose, CA
Fab/Process Engineering
Manufacturing -
Specialty Process Modules
Careers
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More About American Semiconductor
Foundry is a business model for a service organization that caters to the processing and manufacturing of silicon wafers. A pure-play foundry, like American Semiconductor, is a company that focuses 100% of its efforts on this service and offers no end products. These companies typically develop and own the process technology or partner with another company for it. Historically, foundries own their own fabs. However, foundries exist that sub-contract fab requirements and "shared" fabs are an emerging trend for advanced microelectronics fabrication. Other types of companies may offer foundry services to supplement their internal product and capacity requirements.
Fab is short for fabrication facility or silicon wafer manufacturing plant. This term is typically used to describe an individual facility for wafer fabrication that is a physical, bricks & mortar asset, rather than a company. Fabs are generally characterized by their wafer diameter, minimum feature capability, and capacity. American Semiconductor provides pure-play, low-cost foundry services but avoids high capital investment through the utilization of sub-contracted fabs. These facilities produce wafers using Flexfet™ and custom process technologies under the direction of American Semiconductor Engineering.
American Semiconductor foundry customers are typically Fabless Design Companies that utilize foundries to fabricate their custom IC designs using a foundry process. The customer selects the foundry based on the performance of the process technology and mask & wafer cost. The customer orders, receives and pays the foundry for fabricated wafers. The customer will then sell "chips" from the wafers as IC devices or components to their target market. American Semiconductor foundry customers can include "integrated device manufacturers" (IDMs) that outsource a portion of their fabrication requirements even though they own proprietary fabs. These customers do this for a variety of reasons including surge capacity, unique process capability, non-standard process requirements, and fabrication cost reduction.
Licensing: Fabs require on-going new process technology development to meet the challenges of technology scaling. The continued market demand to reduce feature size, reduce power, and increase integration requires continuous development of new fab processes that may or may not require new materials or equipment to produce. American Semiconductor Technology License Customers come from organizations that own fabs and wish to enable their company with the technology advantages that Flexfet™ processes provide.