SVTC To Buy Sematech ATDF Fab, Expand Development Foundry Services
|
SPONSORED LINKS |
November, 16 2007
An Engineer's Brilliant! Tale
With the holidays approaching and a bit of leisure time ahead of us, please consider reading a book ...
More
November, 12 2007
Hynix, Micron Execs Doubt Need for 450 mm Wafers
Resistance to the 450 mm wafer generation was evident at last week’s International Trade Partn...
More
November, 8 2007
After a Wafer Transition, What Happens to Equipment R&D?
In a short follow-up to my last blog, I’d like to refer you to an article I wrote in June 2003...
More
November, 7 2007
450 mm Battle Heats Up
The SEMI International Trade Partners Conference (ITPC) is going on this week in Hawaii. It’s ...
More
Fairchild Semiconductor, “Silicon Valley’s father,” celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Mark Thompson, Fairchild’s president and CEO, talks about the company’s process and technology roadmap, developing timely products, and the company’s move into the “green” sector.
David Lammers, News Editor -- Semiconductor International, 12/4/2007 7:43:00 AM
The Sematech-affiliated Advanced Technology Development Fab (ATDF, Austin, Texas) is merging into SVTC Technologies LLC (San Jose), a spinout from the former Cypress Semiconductor (San Jose) R&D fab.
Following completion of the sale, the two fabs will form a shared-use development foundry organization serving a wide range of R&D efforts, ranging from ICs to solar cells, for customers including fabless companies, universities and large IDMs no longer supporting internal R&D fabs.
The ATDF acquisition, which was reported in mid-October, involves the same investors — Oak Hill Capital Partners (Stamford, Conn.) and Tallwood Venture Capital (Palo Alto, Calif.) — which backed the January 2006 formation of SVTC Technologies. The investors paid $53M for the former Cypress development fab, which is about half the size of the ATDF fab.
 |
| Dave Bergeron, CEO of SVTC LLC |
Bergeron said SVTC has served customers in areas as non-volatile memory (NVM), MEMS, imaging, high-voltage ICs, analog technologies, nanotechnology and solar cell development. SVTC offers 200 and 300 mm production-grade equipment, he added.
Bergeron said the emphasis on new materials and processes is leading companies to use external R&D fabs. “Before plunking down millions of dollars on new equipment for this kind of development, senior technologists are now coming to us for a cost-effective solution that still enables them to pursue their development objectives without compromise,” he said.
 |
| Matt Harlan, a lead technician for ATDF, holds a 300 mm FOUP. |
The outsourcing trend, Bergeron said, opens the door to start-ups and fabless companies to investigate new technologies. Large companies also are “facing increasingly challenging economics of running standalone R&D fabs. SVTC and ATDF together can support large projects, and we have the scale to invest for the future.”
Sematech (Austin, Texas) CEO Michael Polcari took a similar "bigger-is-better" view, saying that SVTC and its investors would use their “substantial resources to take the development foundry concept to the next stage,” including plans to install new equipment at the Austin fab.
In recent years, only modest investments have been made in the 20-year-old 200 mm ATDF facility as Sematech’s lithography, interconnect and metrology R&D programs moved to Sematech’s operation at Albany Nanotech (Albany, N.Y.).
After spinning out ATDF as a for-profit subsidiary in 2004, Sematech opened the fab’s doors to a wider swath of customers, including support for non-Sematech R&D projects by the large Sematech members. Texas Instruments Corp. (Dallas, Texas), for example, has processed wafers at ATDF for an internal research program into multi-gate devices.
The two organizations — ATDF and SVTC — currently serve ~200 customers worldwide, including semiconductor companies, foundries, equipment suppliers, universities and other research institutions. Terms of the deal were not announced. Sematech said the merger is expected to be completed by year's end. ATDF had an estimated $50M in revenues last year. About 200 people work at ATDF, said Sematech spokesman Dan McGowan.
Dave Anderson, general manager of ATDF, said the Austin foundry would continue to serve global and regional customers and support university research. “The merger is an excellent opportunity to expand capabilities, broaden our global customer base, grow our emerging technology, wafer services and tool access businesses, and create new jobs. Together, SVTC and ATDF represent a major force in both the domestic and international markets,” he said.
When the planned deal was reported last October by the Austin American-Statesman, sources speculated that the state of Texas could designate the ATDF as the official state laboratory for nanotech research under a proposed state program called the Texas Alliance for Nanotechnology. Those plans are still being formulated by Texas Governor Rick Perry.
