Is it better to own a fab or stay fabless?

 Owning a fab VS. Staying fabless

Fab is a word of utmost importance used in the Electronics Industry. With the increasing reach of semiconductor electronics, the significance of their absence, as well as presence, has grown many folds. Let us figure out what is better as for today, owning a fab or staying fabless?

Semiconductors are nothing but a type of material having conductivity in between that of insulators and conductors.

Defining Fab

Fab is nothing but an acronym for fabrication plant. Basically, a fab is a semiconductor manufacturing plant. In this plant, raw silicon wafers are turned into integrated electronic circuits. This is the place where electronics circuits are manufactured, usually in a huge amount.

Since the precision of electronic circuits has reached a nanometer scale, it becomes a must to have clean rooms. Ultra-clean rooms, with very careful handling, are a must. There is various equipment involved, along with storage facilities. Besides, there are needed inspections to be carried out of hazardous materials as well as the cost of proper waste disposal.

The cleanliness of the room is measured by dust particles per centimeter cube. It is typically required that the dust concentration should be less than 1000 particles per cubic centimeter.

So what it means to be fabless?

Fabless is the term that involves an industry that prefers to not own a fab. They do not manufacture the silicon wafers used in their products. Instead, they approach various industries that do manufacture silicon wafers. They do not have to worry about all the details and high-cost equipment and processing facilities involved. Rather they only have to worry about the final product, and can browse through as per their requirements. Some of the biggest foundries in the world can be found in the US, China, and Taiwan.

Litho-processing equipment and thin-line deposition equipment are the various types of equipment used in semiconductor manufacturing. Each has its own flow of processes and significance

As mentioned before, owning a fab is not at all easy but it does give a company an upper hand. Still, the cost required not only to create a fab but to maintain is too high. A dramatically high amount of capital investments are needed along with super-clean rooms, litho-processing equipment, thin-line film deposition equipment, shipping equipment, and storage facilities.

On the other hand, Fabless models are increasingly popular because they simply allow the business owner to invest in research and development in new technologies without cutting the flow of high-production volumes. They only have to deal with a small amount of expenditure when buying foundry services from an established fab vendor. They give their customers cost-effective access to microelectronics. Not to mention they have a broad range of fabrication options to choose from.

Conclusion

So overall you can say that the fabless model is what works for business better. But even if fabless models work wonder economically, having a fab can give a significant advantage in terms of growth if provided with sufficient funds.