LFoundry, an analog mixed signal and specialized technologies foundry, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) to acquire Micron Technology Italia, Srl. and all of its semiconductor fabrication facility assets in Avezzano, Italy. Micron’s Fab in Italy is expected to become a strategic part of LFoundry’s global growth.
After this acquisition, LFoundry will employ approximately 2,400 people worldwide and will have a wafer start capacity of 65,000 200mm wafers per month, which will allow LFoundry to expand its market presence as the leading analog mixed signal foundry in Europe.
“Operating out of two most advanced European 200mm Fabs, supporting 90nm, a volume copper path and state of the art technology perfectly positions LFoundry to provide flexible and high quality technology and manufacturing services,” said Günther Ernst, CEO of LFoundry. “Combined with our greatly expanded R&D and engineering teams, our customers will have access to a strong partner for specialized technologies and collaborative development, ensuring smooth industrialization from lab to fab, either based on LFoundry’s CMOS or on proprietary technologies.”
Ernst added that the combination of the manufacturing capacity and the technology capabilities of Micron’s Fab in Avezzano with LFoundry’s existing Fab in Rousset, France, is consistent with their development vision for the company.
“We have successfully attained a strategic position in several value added markets in Europe, such as digital security, imaging and power management,” said Ernst. “With the new Fab in Avezzano, we will surpass an important threshold, enabling us to accelerate further growth of our business outside of Europe.”
Ernst believes that this move will allow the company to begin to gain a foothold in U.S. and APAC markets.
Sounds like good idea for 90nm products with a path for copper that is necessary for future designs. And one famous French and Italians merger was SGS-Thompson which led to ST, a clear winner under Pasquale Pistorio.
However, many micro-controller fabs are dirty compared to the SOC fabs of the same litho generation. And many have little analog test capability nor analog process precsion capability. To future-proof these 200 mm fabs, one might have to add contamination control and cleaner chemicals and piping, [ Might be a good idea to measure the defect-limited yield entitlement for each fab, and learn from best practices.] And teaching logic engineers about analog structures in SOC’s may require some mixing of the two engineering groups.
The copper technology will certainly be an improvement on older via technology if its isolated well from gate stack areas.
I think the timing for this acquisition is good, as 2014-2016 will be better for chip business, and many large companies will be moving to 14 nm, or at least 28 nm and/or 450 mm wafers, keeping them busy, while the simpler product capacity has to get over that aluminum vs copper via technology hump to participate fully at 40 to 90 nm in my opinion.
There certainly will be some cleaner 300 mm "used fabs" coming to market, so watch out for competition from whomever buys those. That generation of tools communicates better with yield management systems than 200 mm generation (which was MUCH better than 150 mm generation.) And data integration is critical for newer design-for-yield software systems. YE’s need tool data as well as wip and test data to ramp new products faster and safer. Be sure and check data transfer rates from all critical tools (some may be turned off or never licensed for high speed).