TI 300mm analogue fab put rivals on notice

The company's long-awaited move to announce the dedicated 300mm analogue fab is aimed to jumpstart and extend its leadership position in analogue share. Eventually, the company could also put pressure on its rivals with the new fab, especially in the power MOSFET arena, where it competes against Fairchild, IR, On Semiconductor and others, according to an analyst.

As reported, TI (Dallas) plans to open a 300mm analogue semiconductor fab in Richardson, Texas, the company said Tuesday. At the same time, the company also outlined its roadmap for mainstream analogue processes and tipped a new 130nm technology based on copper interconnects.

On the fab front, TI's new analogue facility, dubbed RFAB, will be the first analogue chip fab to use 300mm wafers. TI has already moved to equip the fab by buying Rs.838.60 crore ($172.5 million) worth of chip production equipment from Qimonda AG's fab in Sandston, Virginia.

In effect, TI bought the entire 300mm fab tool-set from Qimonda—at a huge and stunning discount. Under the terms with Qimonda, TI bought 330 fab tools from the DRAM maker. The deal included i-line and 248nm scanners from ASML Holding NV and Nikon Corp. To ramp up RFAB, TI will need to buy only 6 more tools, including epitaxial reactors and furnaces.

TI plans to move this equipment from Virginia to the Richardson fab. The company expects to begin equipping the facility next month and ship the first chips from the fab by the end of next year.

Initially, RFAB will produce chips based on TI's LBC7 process, its mainstream, workhorse analogue technology. The 0.25µm process is a high-power, BiCMOS technology.

300mm advantage
Chips based on the LBC7 process account for 40 per cent of TI's analogue output. Over time, the fab will make chips based on TI's future analogue processes, such as the yet-to-be-announced LBC8 (0.18µm technology) and LBC9 (130nm).

RFAB enables TI to expand its worldwide analogue capacity and bring "us cost scaling," said Kevin Ritchie, senior VP of the technology and manufacturing group at TI.

The fab will give TI a leg up on its rivals. In fact, the company's analogue competitors have not announced a new fab in several years. Most analogue fabs produce 8-inch wafers and below, it was noted. In contrast, "TI is the only vendor that can bring 300mm to analogue," said Doug Freedman, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech.

Initially, a 300mm analogue fab could be advantageous—and could the lower the cost—for "large-die" products like MOSFETs, Freedman said. Earlier this year, TI acquired Ciclon Semiconductor Device Corp., a supplier of power MOSFETS and RF-based LDMOS power transistors.

"The MOSFET makers might have the most to worry about" with TI's 300mm fab announcement, he said. Leading power MOSFET suppliers include Diodes, Fairchild, International Rectifier, Ixys, On Semiconductor, Vishay and others, he said.

One of the challenges for TI is clear: photomask costs. A 300mm mask-set is more expensive than 200mm (and below) reticles, he said. To get a return for a 300mm mask-set in analogue will be challenging at best.

Overall, TI remained the No. 1 analogue chip vendor in 2008, despite seeing its market share decline to 14.1 per cent from 14.4 per cent, according to Databeans Inc. The No. 2 analogue player, Europe's STMicroelectronics, grew its analogue business 1 per cent from Rs.18,473.55 crore ($3.8 billion) in 2007 to Rs.18,959.70 crore ($3.9 billion) in 2008, thanks largely to the weakening of the dollar and consolidation of the ST and NXP wireless businesses, Databeans said.

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