Earlier this month, STMicroelectronics (ST) and GF (formerly Globalfoundries) signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly build and run a 300mm semiconductor fab in Crolles, France, alongside ST’s existing fabs. Crolles is just north of Grenoble. This new fab will focus on building FD-SOI (fully depleted silicon on insulator) chips, in addition to making other kinds of chips. FD-SOI is a more economical way to achieve some of the benefits of leading-edge semiconductor process technologies including higher speed and lower power consumption.
ST and GF expect that the new fab will start producing chips in 2024 and that the new fab will reach full production capacity, as many as 620,000 300mm wafers per year by 2026. ST was the first company to commercialize an FD-SOI process, which was later licensed to GF. In addition, the Grenoble area in southeastern France has been a center of FD-SOI development for more than two decades. Soitec in Bernin, which is literally just down the street from the Crolles fab complex, is a major supplier of FD-SOI wafers.
By coincidence, Soitec, GF, and ST, along with CEA (the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), announced a collaborative agreement earlier this year to jointly define the industry’s next generation roadmap for FD-SOI. In that announcement, CEA Chairman François Jacq said, “CEA has… a long history of deep R&D cooperation with… STMicroelectronics, Soitec and GlobalFoundries and has been very active in the initiatives led by the European Commission and Member States aiming to set up a complete ecosystem for FD-SOI going from material suppliers, design houses, EDA tools providers, fabless companies, and end users.” July’s ST/GF FD-SOI memorandum announcement also says, “ST and GF will receive significant financial support from the State of France for the new facility. This facility will strongly contribute to the objectives of the European Chips Act, including the goal of Europe reaching 20% of worldwide semiconductor production by 2030.”
Similarly, there’s a $52 billion, bipartisan bill to support the rebuilding of the US semiconductor industry called the US Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act. The US Senate version of the CHIPS Act is called the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) of 2021. The Senate passed this bill on June 8, 2021. The US House passed its version, the America COMPETES Act, on February 4, 2022. The two versions of the bill now need to be reconciled, and that’s not happening, even though 275 House members and 69 Senators back the completion of this bill according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). President Joe Biden will undoubtedly sign this bill if it ever hits his desk.
Many question the need for this $52 billion influx of taxpayer’s money into the coffers of some very profitable semiconductor companies. Companies that stand to benefit from the CHIPS Act include American companies such as Intel and IBM and non-US companies that are or are considering building fabs in the US, including Taiwan’s TSMC and China’s GlobalWafers. All of these companies, and more, expect to build new manufacturing plants in the US if the CHIPS Act is passed.
In many ways, the situation parallels a similar situation the US found itself in more than 40 years ago. Back in 1980, the US semiconductor industry was in a funk while Japan’s semiconductor industry was becoming increasingly competitive. In only five years, Intel, the company that invented the commercial DRAM in 1970, would exit the DRAM market because it could not compete financially or from a quality perspective with Japanese DRAM makers. The entire industry was stuck above the 1-micron barrier. The IC revolution, which started in the US…
Read More: Pass The US CHIPS Act!