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Fabless future looks bright, but are there dark clouds looming? |
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Jan 17, 2007 at 04:23 PM |
IC Insights' just-released market numbers for the fabless semiconductor space should leave those real men and women without fabrication facilities with smiles on their faces.
Bill McClean's data show that the fabless sector captured 20% of worldwide IC sales in 2006, doubling the 10% share garnered in 2000. The number should climb to 25% of the total IC market in 2011, as more companies pursue a fabless or fab-lite strategy. The trend reflects the stronger historic growth rate of the fabless companies compared to the integrated device manufacturers.
Bully for the fabless folks. But there might be some dark clouds looming on the corporate horizon.
Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research noted in his ISS address last week that because of the narrowing process bandwidths and accelerated node ramps in the nanochip era, the fabless guys may have problems with the ever-shrinking production windows. This means that companies with best-in-class design for manufacturability approaches will have a distinct competitive advantage over the also-rans, ratcheting up the pressure on those companies without fabs to find foundry and EDA partners who are the most DFM saavy.
As Dan showed, DFM has emerged as the new deal-breaker for leading-edge chipmakers: either you take advantage of the solutions or you risk sustaining huge yield and revenue hits during the first several quarters of a new product ramp. In a classic "challenges create opportunities" scenario, there seems to be reasons for the EDA companies to smile too.
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