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SMIC

SMIC – The Largest Semiconductor Foundry Company in Mainland China.

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SMIC is famous as a leading semiconductor foundry company across the globe for its advanced technology and comprehensive semiconductor manufacturing services. SMIC was born in 2000 in the Cayman Islands and is currently headquartered at Shanghai, China. Richard Chang Ru-gin is the founder of the company and Haijun Zhao is the latest CEO. SMIC Group primarily focuses on providing integrated circuit (IC) foundry and technology services related to it on a specific range of process nodes (350 nm to 14 nm). SMIC is well known in international markets including Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and the US.

Founding History of SMIC

SMIC was founded out of strong desires of Richard Chang to invest in the Chinese market as he believed that a booming economy will reestablish harmony in the nation. Twenty years ago, the semiconductor industry in mainland China wasn’t superior in the market and didn’t have any international standards. Before Richard established SMIC, his main target was to make mainland China a superpower which advanced tech in manufacturing semiconductors so that it can match up to the nations who are leading in it.

SMIC
Image source: www.mobileworldlive.com

Richard had big plans for his nation and this zeal drove him to finally establish SMIC in 2001 at Shanghai’s High-tech Zhangjiang Park located in Pudong New Area. SMIC became the first successful leading company from mainland China in the semiconductor industry to expand its market even in international grounds. And with the contributions made by Richard Chang he is known as the “father of the Chinese semiconductors.”

Uncertain Times

Initially, when company was established it became a limited liability company in the Cayman Islands. SMIC operated in a way that it was not responsible for the capital costs and the municipal government took care of it. When the company was eventually growing in the Chinese market, the Taiwanese were threatened by a potential emerging semiconductor superpower. They tried in several unethical ways to bring down the reputation of both SMIC and Richard Chang.

Only two years after founding the company, TSMC (world’s largest semiconductor foundry) filed a lawsuit against SMIC accusing it of obtaining TSMC’s trade secret and other infringement. But, Richard on the other hand worshipped the Chinese semiconductor sector and no matter what he wasn’t ready to give up. Chang’s determination is one of the reasons why China can compete with big nations like the US in the semiconductor market.

Growth and Expansion of SMIC

SMIC started making significant progress from the last decade starting with embarking on a joint venture in 2013. Next year, SilTech Shanghai, a wholly owned subsidiary of SMIC along with JCET, and China IC Fund signed a co-investment agreement for forming a consortium. This was formed for the proposed acquisition of a very valuable acquisition of STATS ChipPAC, a Singapore-based company. In 2015, SMIC entered into another joint venture with Huawei, Qualcomm, and IMEC International to form SMIC Advanced Technology Research & Development Corporation. SMIC built a very advanced R&D facility which aimed at designing China’s most advanced integrated circuit (IC). The partnership of company with other three companies mainly focused on developing 14 nm logic technology.

In 2016, company acquired 70% of the corporate capital of LFoundry S.r.l. €49 million. SMIC throughout the following years have focussed on establishing and maintaining strong relationships with other semiconductor corporations especially the ones based in China. The very idea behind founding SMIC was to strengthen China wholly as a superior semiconductor entity and it will continue if the companies remain united. In 2018, SMIC was investing 16 percent of sales in R&D and the company started building China’s first ever plant which aimed to use 14 nm production technology. Last year, China National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund and the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund made an investment of $2 billion in the company as a part of the Made in China 2025 Program.

About Richard Chang Ru-gin

Richard Chang is a famous person who is single handedly responsible for uplifting the semiconductor industry in China. At a very young age, Richard moved from Shanghai to Taiwan and later went to the US and acquired his PhD in electrical engineering from Texas. In 1977, Richard joined Texas Instruments ton emrak on his chipmaker career and was involved in the operations of the company in several nations. After entering the chip industry, his one and only goal was to make China catch up with the rest of the world in terms of cutting edge tech. So, in 1997 he came back to Taiwan and a few years later he established SMIC and created an empire for mainland China to embrace forever.

ON Semiconductor

ON Semiconductor – The Most Trustworthy Semiconductor Supplier.

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ON Semiconductor is one of the few semiconductor distributors in Fortune 500, but it has been relegated to Fortune 1000(512) in 2020, according to recent news. In North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific, ON Semiconductor operates a broad network of production facilities. They also operate sales and layout center communities. The headquarters of ON Semiconductors is in Phoenix, Arizona. It is a worldwide leader in semiconductor sales of $3,907 billion (2016).

The Establishment Of ON Semiconductor


In 1999, ON Semiconductor was founded. The company started out in the Semiconductor Components Group of Motorola as the byproduct. Motorola’s discreet, standard analog, and standard logical devices are still produced. The acquisition of Cherry Semiconductor by ON Semiconductors was completed in April 2000. ON Semiconductor acquired AMI Semiconductor in March 2008 at a cost of $915 million. The purchase of Catalyst Semiconductor Inc. by the ON Semiconductor Corporation for $115 million on July 17, 2008, has been announced by On Semiconductor Corporations, Inc. The purchase approval was announced on 9 October 2008 by Catalyst Semiconductor, Inc. The purchase was completed on 10th October 2008 by ON Semiconductor Corporation. ON Semiconductor completed its $17M purchase in November 2009. In July of 2014 (including the settlement of a grant offer for foundries and a permanent agreement whereby ON Semiconductors is a 10 percent partner of Fujitsu’s 8-inch wafer fabric in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan) ON Semiconductors and Fujitsu Semiconductor announced a Strategic Partnership. In April 2019, ON Semiconductors acquired the 300 mm manufacturing facility of GlobalFoundries in East Fishkill, New York.

ON Semiconductor
Image source: www.electronicsmedia.info


ON Semiconductors Products


In conjunction with digital signal processors, FM receivers, extension controllers, and modulators, ON Semiconductors supplies application-precision Standard Products (ASSP). In addition, they provide a wide range of Digital Signal Processor (DSP) hearing aid structures. The ON Semiconductors HCT CMOS logic family works with 2 to 6 V Vcc, and ESD safety over 3 company standards (HBM, MM, CDM). Inputs compatible with TTL are included in the HCT logic family. The limited portfolio of Fast Switch Technology (FST) switches comes from ON Semiconductor. The ON Semiconductor Bipolar Metal Gate Family has a Vcc-spectrum of 3 to 18 V, work temperature range between -55 to +125 C, and latch-up immunity greater than 500 mA. ON Semiconductor’s VHCT CMOS logic family runs at 2.0 to 5.5 V Vcc and shows delays in propagation of just 3.8 ns. TTL compatible inputs are available in the VHCT logic family. The ON Semiconductors ACT CMOS logic family has a power current of 24 mA and Vcc operates from 3.0 to 5.5 V. The TTL-compatible inputs in the ACT logic family. ON Semiconductor’s AC CMOS logical family has a powerful cutting-edge of 24 mA and Vcc range of 3.0 to 5.5 V. ON Semiconductors supplies a number of 1-gate and 2-gate MiniGate standard logic devices, in superior micro-packages.


Hassane El-Khoury, The CEO


Hassane El-Khoury was appointed as ON Semiconductor and Semiconductor Components Industries, LLC’s president and chief executive officer in December 2020. In the meantime, El-Khoury was President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of Cypress Semiconductor’s Board of Directors until it was sold to Infineon in April 2020, before becoming an officer of ON Semiconductor.
For 13 years at Cypress, he played numerous roles in the control of business units, product improvement, program engineering, and business improvement. Mr. El-Khoury began his profession as a senior design engineer at Continental Automotive Systems. After moving to the United States from Lebanon, El-Khoury graduated from Lawrence Technological University with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in engineering from Oakland University. He was awarded a Silicon Valley 40 under the age of 40 in 2018 and is now a member of the KeraCel board.


Sherman Fairchild Arthur Rock, The Founder


Rock was born in Rochester, New York, in a Jewish family. He was an only child and his father owned a small sweet keep wherein Rock labored as a youth. He graduated from the University of Syracuse in 1948 with a B.A. from Harvard Business School and received his MA in Business Management in 1951.
Based out of Silicon Valley, California, he was an early investor in most important companies which include Intel, Apple Computer, Scientific Data Systems, and Teledyne. He joined the United States Army all through World World War II however the battle ended earlier than he was deployed. He then went to university at the G.I. Bill. Rock commenced his profession in 1951 as a securities analyst in New York City, after which joined the company finance branch of Hayden, Stone & Company in New York, wherein he centered on raising cash for small high-technology companies.

United Microelectronics Corporation

United Microelectronics Corporation – Taiwan’s First Semiconductor Company.

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Taiwan is the manufacturing hub for most of the world’s biggest electronics and IT companies. Apart from providing land for manufacturing and labor for work, Taiwan has also given some big-name companies that are leaders of their respective fields. UMC, aka United Microelectronics Corporation, is one such Taiwanese company that has made its mark on the international level. In fact, it is the first semiconductor company in Taiwan.

UMC was founded in 1980, and its headquarter is based in Hsinchu Science Park Hsinchu, Taiwan. The founding of the company is a result of the spinning off of the government-sponsored organization, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

About United Microelectronics Corporation

As said earlier UMC is a spin-off company of a state-owned institution. The company is the first semiconductor company in Taiwan, and it is known to manufacture integrated circuit wafers for other companies which produce fabless semiconductor. Though the company is based in Taiwan, it does most of its business outside the country, TSMC and GlobalFoundries being its major competitors and the automotive industry being its major area of service. The company operates through its four different fabs (300 mm), based in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and China, to provide better service to its customers.

United Microelectronics Corporation
Image Source: tradingview.com

UMC incorporates the latest technologies and innovative techniques to manufacture and process IC manufacturing. Logic/Mixed-Signal, embedded High-Voltage, embedded Non-Volatile-Memory, RFSOI, and BCD, etc., are some of the techniques used by the company. The company has over 12 fab productions and produces about 800,000 wafers every month.

UMC trades as a public company and has listed on New York Stock Exchange as well as Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company employs over 19,500 people worldwide, and as per 2019 records, the company made annual revenues worth US$5 billion.

The Founding and Growth

UMC became the first Taiwanese semiconductor company when it got spun off from the state-owned ITRI. It became the pioneer of the commercial semiconductor industry for Taiwan. In 1985, UMC listed on  Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company ran on the IDM model for about fifteen years from its inception, and then in 1995, the company switched to the pure-play foundry model and started to manufacture its own products.

The next year, UMC spun off multiple design units, resulting in the formation of AMIC Technology, MediaTek, ITE Technology,  Novatek, Faraday Technology, and Davicom. In 1999, the company established its first 12A, Taiwan’s first 12-inch wafer fab in Tainan Science Park. The next year, UMC became Taiwan’s first-ever semiconductor company to list on the New York Stock Exchange. The same year, the company started to manufacture the chips using copper process technology. It also brought the first 0.13-micron ICs to the industry.

In 2024, the Singapore-based wafer fab of the UMC started mass production, and in 2008, UMC listed some of its stocks on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI). The company also made some acquisitions like Hejian Technology Wafer Fab of China in 2013 and  Japan-based Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor in 2019. In 2015, UMC entered China by establishing a 12-inch wafer fab in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China, where the company started the 28 nm mass production in 2017.

Stan Hung: The Chairman at UMC

Stan Hung is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Strategy Officer in United Microelectronics Corporation. He joined the company in 1991 and became the chairman in 2008. Hung is a native of Taiwan. He completed his school education from a local high school and earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Tamkang University, Taiwan.

Other than being the chairman of UMC, Hung also holds a prime position in some prominent companies. He has been appointed as the chairman of the board in Fortune Venture Capital Corp., TLC Capital Co., Ltd., and Faraday Technology Corporation. Hung also serves Triknight Capital Corporation and UnitedDS Semiconductor (Shandong) Co., Ltd. as the director.

Keyence

Keyence Corporations – The Japanese Electronics and Semiconductor Leader

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Keyence is a Japanese multinational electronics company with its headquarters located in Osaka, Japan. The company is one of the largest manufacturers of electronic equipment like sensors, touch panels, 3D printers, microscopes, bar code readers, recorders, packaged software, etc.  It is a fabrication-less company such that it plans and designs the products, but the manufacturing is done by the other companies under a contract from Keyence. The company is operational in industries including automotive, IT, logistics, manufacturing, and software. Keyence is a publically traded company, and over 8000 people are working for it in its global offices.

Founding of Keyence

Takemitsu Takizaki founded Keyence in March 1972 as Lead Electric. The company got worldwide recognition as a leader in the field of industrial automation and inspection equipment manufacturing in 1974. In 1975, the company brought a new product, ‘high accuracy proximity sensor’, and the high demand for the product brought lots of success and growth to the company. In the next ten years, the company was known as the world leader in the electronic industry.

Keyence
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In 1983, the company introduced the optical fiber photoelectric sensor, and the next year, it established its first international office in the United States. Keyence developed the first photoelectric sensor to utilize a laser diode as the light source in 1986, and the same year, the name of the company was changed to Keyence Corporation. The company introduced a compact barcode reader under its name in 1989, and in 1990, it came with a microscope having a built-in monitor. In the next decade, the company developed the world’s smallest machine vision system, the world’s first autofocus color laser microscope, and a high speed and high accuracy machine vision system.

The years starting from 2000 were the years of innovation for the company. It was developing new products every year, and the world’s first 3-Axis laser marker (2006) as well as the world’s first CMOS laser sensor (2007), was one of them. Keyence also introduced the world’s first microscope with high-speed magnified video capture capabilities in 2008 and the fastest laser triangulation sensor in the industry in 2009. world’s smallest micro-head (2011), the world’s fastest 2D/3D laser displacement sensor (2012), and the world’s first macroscope with one-shot 3D measurement (2013) are also credited under the name of Keyence.

The Products

From photoelectric sensor and proximity sensors to barcode reader, laser markers, and digital microscopes, a large client base of Keyence rely on the company for these products. Keyence specializes in manufacturing products under categories like automation sensors, industrial safety, industrial laser markers, machine vision systems and vision sensors, industrial inkjet printer, measurement systems and sensors, advanced microscope, static eliminators, and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC).

Keyence Today

Keyence has been in the electronic industry for almost 50 years, and since the inception of the company, the world has witnessed the per year steady growth of the company. The company is one of the leaders in the development and manufacturing of automation equipment worldwide. Other than the electronic and semiconductor industry, the company includes clients from the automotive, food and packaging, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries. 

As of 2018, the company made revenues worth US$4.958 billion, and 6000 people were working for it in its global offices. It has appeared in the “Top Ten Most Excellent Companies in Japan” list by Nihon Keizai Shimbun multiple times. It has also been named as one of the best companies for employees in terms of salaries, the average annual salary for full-time employees, etc. Keyence operates through its network of  16 international organizations.

The Founder: Takemitsu Takizaki

Takemitsu Takizaki founded Keyence Corporation in 1972. He is a well-known Japanese businessman and currently serving as the honorary chairman of Keyence. Takizaki was born on 10 June 1945 in Japan. He completed his high school education at Amagasaki Industry High School. Apart from his interest in electronics and semiconductors, he is also a keen fossil collector.

After founding the Keyence, he held multiple posts at the company. He served the company as the chairman, president, and representative director. Presently, he is one of the members of the board at Keyence. AS of 2020, the net worth of Takizaki is $24 billion.

NXP Semiconductors

NXP Semiconductors – A leading semiconductor company that was originally a part of Philips.

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NXP Semiconductors is one of the largest non-memory semiconductors suppliers across the world. The company is famous in the electronics industry for supplying semiconductors for secure identification, automotive, and digital networking sectors. Originally the company was founded in 1953 as a part of Philips and it was known as Philips Semiconductors. But, in 2006 this division was sold to private equity investors who then changed the name to NXP Semiconductors.

Currently, the headquarters of this spun-off company is based in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company is running its business in more than 35 countries with approximately 31,000 employees. Kurt Sievers is the current CEO and President of NXP Semiconductors. Qualcomm, a few years back, proposed to buy the company but the deal was called off later.

History of NXP Semiconductors

Philips is a multinational conglomerate and back in 1953, it had many divisions and factories spread across many regions. In 1953, Philips started a small-scale production in Nijmegen (a city in Dutch) which became a part of Icoma (a division of Dutch Philips). Over the next two decades many such production facilities and new divisions were established by Philips.

In 1975, Philips acquired Signetics which made the former company the second-largest semiconductor manufacturers in the entire world. Every division of Philips in every other nation had a different name and the company decided to merge all these into Philips Components and renamed it as Philips Semiconductor in 1991. In 1999, Philips Semiconductors acquired VLSI Technology and this acquisition made it the sixth-largest semiconductor company in the world.

Formation of NXP Semiconductors

It was in December 2005 when Philips decided to spin off Philips Semiconductors and make it an independent company. A consortium of private equity investors bought an 80.1% stake in Philips Semiconductors in September 2006. The investors who were involved in this acquisition were  Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), Bain Capital, Silver Lake Partners, Apax Partners, and AlpInvest Partners. The new name of the company was changed to NXP Semiconductors (from next experience). The company was launched officially during the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) consumer electronics show in Berlin. Even after the company was separated from the big brand name of Philips, NXP ranked one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide.

NXP Semiconductors
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During the acquisition, Frans Van Houten was the CEO of NXP Semiconductors. He emphasized on the fact that NXP should evolve and enter into the “vibrant media” technologies present in every essential gadget and appliance from smartphones to digital televisions. NXP planned to strengthen its mobile phone and personal business and thus announced the acquisition of Silicon Laboratories’ AeroFONE single-chip phone and power amplifier product lines.

After one year, NXP decided to start a joint venture with STMicroelectronics and NXP’s mobile and personal business unit. But in 2009 STMicroelectronics bought the 20% stake of NXP and it became a joint venture between Ericsson and ST.  The same year NXP decided to sell its Home Business unit to Trident Microsystems. NXP was in a very good shape this time which called for a restructure of its manufacturing plan and it led to a job loss of 4,500 employees.

Major Events in The Company

In 2009, the position of  Frans Van Houten was taken over by Rick Clemmer and under his leadership, the company focussed more on “high-performance mixed-signal” products. In 2010, NXP acquired Jennic, a UK-based company that is now part of its smart home and energy product line. The same year NXP announced its IPO in NASDAQ with a total shares of 34,000,000. At the end of 2010, the company decided to sell its Sound Solutions business for $855 million. In 2012, NXP’s revenue increased by 41% as compared to 2011 and it was mainly because of demand for NFC chips and secure elements. Last year, Kurt Sievers was appointed the new CEO of the company.

Kurt Sievers – CEO of NXP Semiconductors

Since May 2020, Kurt has been serving as the CEO of the company and his main motto for the company is “secure connections for a smarter world”. The focus of the company should evolve with time and the demand of users is always changing with more profound tech and the threats of compromising it. Kurt went to Augsburg University, Germany, and has two master’s degrees in information technology and physics respectively. Kurt has significantly made many acquisitions possible for NXP and played different roles in the company since 1995.

Micron Technology

Micron Technology: From a Budding Consulting Firm to Largest Semiconductor Producers.

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There have been incidents where except the founder of a company, nobody believes in their idea. But as time passes, people start recognizing the ability of the company and the potential of its back idea. A similar case happened with the American semiconductor and memory device manufacturer Micron Technology, as people mocked the founders for thinking of diving into the huge competition. But later, they realized the worth of the company and the vision of the founders. Micron Technology started as a semiconductor consulting business, and with time, became the largest semiconductor and memory chip producer in the industry.

A Brief Introduction

Micron Technology is an America-based memory device and semiconductor manufacturer, with its headquarter located in Boise, Idaho, U.S. The company specializes in the manufacturing of dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. As of 2020, the total recorded revenue of the company was US$21.44 billion, and around 40,000 people are working for the company.

Micron Technology
Image Source: businesskorea.co.kr

The Founding of Micron Technology

Four design engineers Ward Parkinson, Joe Parkinson, Dennis Wilson, and Doug Pitman from Mostek Corporation, left their well-paying job to establish Micron Technology in 1978. The company started its operations as a semiconductor design consulting company from the basement of a dentist’s office in Boise, Idaho. It raised its initial funding from some local investors as not many were interested in investing in a new company.

Eventually, Micron Technology successfully established its first wafer fabrication unit in 1981 and started manufacturing the 64K DRAM chips. Just in one year, the company manufactured and supplied around one million chips in 1982. The idea of starting their own manufacturing unit helped the company go public in just six years of its inception.

At the beginning of the 90s, the chips from Micron Technology made their way into the manufacturing of newly introduced personal computers. The growing demand for Micron chips led the company to establish a new manufacturing unit worth 1.3 billion in Utah. In order to expand its operation, the company acquired Texas Instruments’ memory division in 1998.

Micron Technology
Image Source: events.wsu.edu

At the beginning of the 2000s, Micron Technology started to manufacture atomic layer deposition high-k films for DRAM memory devices as well as the 30-nm class NAND flash memory. The latter has been a popular discovery among manufacturers worldwide. In 2005, the company joined its hands with Intel to establish a joint venture named IM Flash Technologies. The next year, Micron went on to acquire Lexar, and in 2008, the company bought the stakes of Qimonda in Inotera technologies. In the next 5-7 years, the company acquired names like Displaytech, Numonyx, Inotera Memories, Elpida Memory, etc.

Micron Technology partnered with Intel in May 2018 and launched the QLC NAND memory, equipment to enhance the storage density. The same year, Micron Technology was among the top 500 companies on the Fortune 500 USA list. In 2019, the company introduced the first 1TB microSD card, and the next year, the company’s 3.84TB Micron 5210 Ion became the world’s cheapest but large capacity SSD. The same year Micron technology joined its hands with NVIDIA to enter the field of graphics processing unit manufacturing and also introduced its latest 176-layer 3D NAND chip with better read and write latency.

The CEO: Sanjay Mehrotra

Sanjay Mehrotra is the serving CEO of Micron Technology. He is an Indian-born American entrepreneur, who is also known as the co-founder of the flash memory products manufacturer company, SanDisk. Mehrotra completed his high school education from Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Lodhi Road, Delhi, and joined BITS Pilani to pursue his graduation. Later he got transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed a bachelors’ as well as a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

In 1988, he co-founded SanDisk and held many important roles at the company. For a period from 2011 to 2016, he served the company as the president and the CEO. He left SanDisk after it was acquired by Western Digital in 2016. In May 2017, he was appointed as the chief executive officer of Micron Technology.