Talk:Foundry model/Archives/2013

Moved from article
very interesting but more on SOC than foundry, moved here from article RJFJR 18:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

UMC, TSMC's closest competitor, is sometimes called a virtual IDM, due to their ownership of and involvement in other Taiwanese design-firms.

By the 1990s, transistor miniaturization reached the level where designers could experiment with a system-level design approach: the system-on-a-chip (SOC). The term SOC refers to a single-IC product which combines the functions of multiple ICs into a single chip. The single-chip SOC reduces not only space and cost (both critical design parameters for mobile applications), but also increases reliability due to the reduction of mechanical contacts on the finished product. Designing an SOC requires a designer to work at a higher level of abstraction than the traditional circuit-designer ("the forest versus the trees.") Leveraging complete and pre-verified functional blocks (called "IP-cores"), the SOC-designer focuses his attention on system-level and integration issues. Analogous to design-reuse in the software industry, SOC-development improved productivity by allowing predesigned blocks to be used multiple times by different designers, with the only requirement of re-verification.

As SOCs continue to increase in size and complexity, reusuable-IP will likely grow beyond its current niche market. Many IPs are the order of complexity of standalone chips, representing the effort of an entire design team: LAN controllers, USB controller, PCI interface, ADCs, DACs, microcontrollers, wireless transceivers, programmable logic, RAM, Flash ROM, etc. For the SOC-designer, reusable-IP allows 1 engineer to reuse the work of 100 engineers; it is perhaps the only practical way to build a networked consumer-device in reasonable time. For the merchant-foundry, reusable-IP can not only lure new customers (for highly-specialized, rare IP-cores), they can lock the customer to the merchant. Foundry-developed IPs are rarely made available for competitor fabs, and even independently-developed IP cores can only be targeted to a narrow range of fabs.

This was in the ongoing issues section. I'm not convinced it is directly applicable to the section it was in; though it is nicely precise. RJFJR 17:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * In an EETimes interview, an executive of NVidia stated that the cumulative cost of developing an unnamed Geforce product exceeded 100 million US dollars. 

Unsourced
I see no sources in the article, so I've added unsourced. Computerjoe 's talk 13:46, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Todo
We need to find a way to get the word photomask out of the Ongoing issues section, it's too technical. RJFJR 01:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Merge?
I found it confusing that there are two separate articles for Foundry model and Foundry (electronics), especially when the talk page for the latter redirects to this talk page. I am of the opinion that only one article is necessary, and that the two articles should be merged. Before I add any merge templates to either page, please comment in this thread. DFH 16:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I find it confusing, too. Since foundry is a business model for foundry, and foundry is a type of factory, there is reasonable to have two articles. And there are. But then, their talk pages should be separate, too. I don't think that because the same talk pages exist for both articles, a merge should be done, but exactly the opposite. The talk page should be split into two talk pages. --Biblbroks Talk2me 19:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Foundry (electronics) is about how chips are made. Foundry model is about economics and business. RJFJR 22:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Foundry (electronics) now has its own talk page again. Please keep these articles separate unless there is a vote to merge them. DFH 22:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fab numbers
What do the numbers mean some fabs have in their names? For example, there are AMD's "Fab 30" and "Fab 36" in Dresden. Does this mean AMD has 36 or even more fabs? --Abdull 15:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

All companies name their fabs differently. For AMD: the fab number is the age of the company when the fab opened (I don't know what they would do if they opened two fabs in one year). Dddrewski 22:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fab vs. Foundry
I think the definition of Foundry is wrong on this page. In my experience in the US, a foundry is a subset of fabs. Fabs are any place the chips are made (from bare silicon wafers to completed wafers ready for dicing and packaging). A foundry is a fab that does not produce products for itself. TSMC is an example of a foundry. It produces chips for other companies, and there are no chips that carry the TSMC name. By contrast, Intel does not have foundries. Their fabs make chips that are their own design and bear the Intel name. Dddrewski 22:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above comment. DFH 22:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)