153:, an area where the environment is controlled to eliminate all dust, since even a single speck can ruin a microcircuit, which has nanoscale features much smaller than dust particles. The clean room must also be damped against vibration to enable nanometer-scale alignment of machines and must be kept within narrow bands of temperature and humidity. Vibration control may be achieved by using deep piles in the cleanroom's foundation that anchor the cleanroom to the bedrock, careful selection of the construction site, and/or using vibration dampers. Controlling temperature and humidity is critical for minimizing
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241:, is sponsoring the "300 mm Prime" initiative. An important goal of this initiative is to enable fabs to produce greater quantities of smaller chips as a response to shorter lifecycles seen in consumer electronics. The logic is that such a fab can produce smaller lots more easily and can efficiently switch its production to supply chips for a variety of new electronic devices. Another important goal is to reduce the waiting time between processing steps.
220:, so each process step is being performed on more and more chips at once. The goal is to spread production costs (chemicals, fab time) over a larger number of saleable chips. It is impossible (or at least impracticable) to retrofit machinery to handle larger wafers. This is not to say that foundries using smaller wafers are necessarily obsolete; older foundries can be cheaper to operate, have higher yields for simple chips and still be productive.
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161:, which are also part of the cleanroom's ceiling, the cleanroom itself, which may or may not have more than one story, a return air plenum, the clean subfab that may contain support equipment for the machines in the cleanroom such as chemical delivery, purification, recycling and destruction systems, and the ground floor, that may contain electrical equipment. Fabs also often have some office space.
157:. Corona discharge sources can also be used to reduce static electricity. Often, a fab will be constructed in the following manner (from top to bottom): the roof, which may contain air handling equipment that draws, purifies and cools outside air, an air plenum for distributing the air to several floor-mounted
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Typically an advance in chip-making technology requires a completely new fab to be built. In the past, the equipment to outfit a fab was not very expensive and there were a huge number of smaller fabs producing chips in small quantities. However, the cost of the most up-to-date equipment has since
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machines. All these devices are extremely precise and thus extremely expensive. Prices for most common pieces of equipment for the processing of 300 mm wafers range from $ 700,000 to upwards of $ 4,000,000 each with a few pieces of equipment reaching as high as $ 340,000,000 each (e.g.
213:. However, for companies with more limited product lines, it is often best to either rent out the fab, or close it entirely. This is due to the tendency of the cost of upgrading an existing fab to produce devices requiring newer technology to exceed the cost of a completely new fab.
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Another side effect of the cost has been the challenge to make use of older fabs. For many companies these older fabs are useful for producing designs for unique markets, such as
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Additionally, there is a large push to completely automate the production of semiconductor chips from beginning to end. This is often referred to as the "
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The industry was aiming to move from the state-of-the-art wafer size 300 mm (12 in) to 450 mm by 2018. In March 2014,
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The clean room is where all fabrication takes place and contains the machinery for integrated circuit production such as
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manufacturing facility in Taiwan. The same company estimations suggest that their future fab might cost $ 20 billion. A
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Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab at over one billion
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expected 450 mm deployment by 2020. But in 2016, corresponding joint research efforts were stopped.
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Mutschler, Ann
Steffora (2008). "Pure-play foundries comprise 84% of market, IC Insights says".
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The
International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI), an extension of the US consortium
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138:(IDMs). Companies that farmed out manufacturing of their designs to foundries were termed
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Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.
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Parts of this article (those related to the current state of the art) need to be
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emerged in the 1990s: Foundries that produced their own designs were known as
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Fab 1 in
Dresden, Germany. The large rectangles house large cleanrooms.
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Chips and change : how crisis reshapes the semiconductor industry
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grown to the point where a new fab can cost several billion dollars.
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scanners). A typical fab will have several hundred equipment items.
524:(McGrawโHill Handbooks) by Hwaiyu Geng (hardcover โ April 27, 2005)
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498:
Handbook of
Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology, Second Edition
339:"TSMC says 3nm plant could cost it more than $ 20bn - TheINQUIRER"
518:(Essential Guide Series) by Jim Turley (paperback โ Dec 29, 2002)
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by Gary S. May and Costas J. Spanos (hardcover โ May 22, 2006)
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by
Michael Quirk and Julian Serda (paperback โ Nov 19, 2000)
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by Robert
Doering and Yoshio Nishi (Hardcover โ Jul 9, 2007)
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for the business aspects of foundries and fabless companies
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with values as high as $ 3โ4 billion not being uncommon.
430:"Intel says 450 mm will deploy later in decade"
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Photo of the interior of a clean room of a 300mm fab
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International
Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors
16:Factory where integrated circuits are manufactured
456:"With 450mm on Ice, 300mm Shoulders Heavier Load"
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319:Begins Construction on Gigafab In Central Taiwan
345:. Archived from the original on 12 October 2017
216:There has been a trend to produce ever larger
298:(1st ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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532:https://www.einnosys.com/fab-automation/
274:for the process of manufacturing devices
257:List of semiconductor fabrication plants
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504:Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology
516:The Essential Guide to Semiconductors
522:Semiconductor Manufacturing Handbook
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292:Brown, Clair; Linden, Greg (2011).
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529:Semiconductor fabrication software
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542:"Chip Makers Watch Their Waste",
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556:Categories
492:References
440:2014-05-31
262:Rock's law
151:clean room
461:3 January
434:Archived
410:Archived
359:cite web
349:26 April
322:Archived
245:See also
239:SEMATECH
166:steppers
193:History
174:etching
105:foundry
91:In the
82:run by
34:updated
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218:wafers
209:, and
182:dicing
178:doping
279:Notes
225:Intel
128:wafer
124:Fab15
463:2021
365:link
351:2018
300:ISBN
180:and
120:TSMC
84:TSMC
187:EUV
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