ASMC 200mm CMOS Wafer Fab, Shanghai, China

Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation of Shanghai (ASMC) has established a silicon manufacturing venture with Jazz Semiconductor. Jazz's mixed-signal and Radio Frequency (RF) technologies will be made in ASMC's new 200mm wafer fab in Shanghai. Volume production is expected in the fourth quarter of 2003, when the fab will start producing 30,000 200mm wafers per month. This will bring ASMC's total wafer fab capacity to 100,000 wafers per month. The company will focus on making analog and mixed-signal chips, and power ICs.

Jazz will contribute bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS) and Silicon Germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS process technology and engineering assistance. The strategic alliance hence brings Chinese RF IC manufacturers access to advanced silicon-germanium, RF and analog foundry services. It correspondingly provides Jazz customers access in China to RF and mixed-signal process technologies and a second source for devices made in its Newport Beach facility.

SIGE CIRCUITS IN WIRELESS HANDSETS

China's semiconductor market is forecast to grow to $34 billion by 2005, and the country could become the world's largest semiconductor consumer by 2010. China already forms the world's largest mobile communications market, with sales in 2002 alone of above 200 million mobile phone subscribers and more than 100 million handsets. The country's market even grew by 18% in 2001, when chip demand in the rest of the world decreased. It now accounts for over 10% of semiconductor industry worldwide.

A primary market for SiGe circuits is in wireless handsets, which demand low-power, low-cost integrated RF functions.

BIPOLAR, ANALOG AND POWER PROCESSES

ASMC has several bipolar processes, with its 24 micron S00436W process, for example, having single-sided junction isolation and collector plug diffusions, npn and lateral pnp transistors and I²L logic.

ASMC also has BiCMOS (1.2 micron and 80 nm). This process features twin-well polysilicon gates and embedded high-voltage MOS. It has double-level metal and optional double level poly.

Jazz brings its SiGe technology to the agreement, which is widely regarded as a key enabler for smaller, higher-performance, lower-power communications products. It combines the advantages of both silicon and germanium. This can double or quadruple switching speeds of conventional silicon technology. Its most mature SiGe60 process, for example, builds low-cost, low-power devices for networking and wireless. The process has a cut-off frequency Ft of 70GHz with 0.35 micron gate length CMOS and three- to four-layer metallization on 8in wafers.

WAFER FOUNDRY SERVICES FOR SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES

ASMC, previously Philips Semiconductor Corporation of Shanghai, is a joint venture between the Chinese government and Royal Philips Electronics NV (the Netherlands). It is China's largest wafer fabrication company and is based in the heart of China's "Silicon Plain", Shanghai. It provides wafer foundry manufacturing services for semiconductor companies in the face of spiraling costs for building new IC fabs.

The company mainly builds ICs for Philips, with long-term technology transfer agreements with both Philips and Nortel. It has also signed a foundry alliance with California Micro Devices Corp under which ASMC will produce analog semiconductors and Application Specific Integrated Passive (ASIP) circuits.

ASMC offers partnerships to supplement customers' existing wafer-fab capacities or upgrade a product line. Technologies include a high-voltage double metal analog/bipolar process, a CMOS process with EEPROM for smart cards and a double-metal/double-poly mixed-signal CMOS process. The company has one 5in bipolar fab (Fab 1) producing up to 40,000 ICs/month at line widths down to 1.5 microns and a 6in BiCMOS fab (Fab 2) producing up to 30,000 ICs/month at line widths down to 0.6 microns.

ASMC also has a wafer supply agreement with California Micro Devices that establishes ASMC as a manufacturing site for California Micro Devices' Application Specific Integrated Passive (ASIP™) devices and analog semiconductors.

Jazz Semiconductor is a specialty foundry company that was formed by Conexant Systems Inc. The company makes high-performance, low-power RF wireless and broadband wireline communications circuits. It also manufactures SiGe (silicon germanium) bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS), silicon BiCMOS, analog and mixed-signal CMOS and produces design tools for communications IC foundry services.

CONTRACTORS

Asyst Technologies is supplying 200mm wafer isolation (SMIF) and wafer-lot trackers.

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