London Calling: Toshiba offers foundry services

LONDON – Toshiba has begun offering its European customers an extensive More-than-Moore (MtM) foundry service based on access to 200-mm wafer fab capacity and support for CMOS manufacturing processes from 0.6-micron down to 90-nm. Toshiba is also offering a process development service that combines support for special processes, process modifications and bespoke process development.

Toshiba reckons its service is suitable for customers working on special applications, particularly in areas such as sensors, detectors and analog functions, all areas where European companies are reckoned to have some expertise. Process nodes supported include 0.6-micron, 0.35-micron, 180-nm, 130-nm, 110-nm and 90-nm and standard IP options include logic and memory (SRAM, ROM, EEPROM and embedded flash EEPROM) and image sensors with a variety of pixel sizes. High voltage CMOS and DMOS process modules are also available Toshiba said.

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Toshiba is also saying it can provide non-standard postprocessing options including through-silicon-vias, optical films and above-die microlenses. This extensive More-than-Moore foundry service includes wafer probing and light/dark testing in Toshiba's fab in Iwate, Japan.

Does Toshiba opening up its older fab to European fabless companies look like a fab-filling exercise?

In any case the Toshiba foundry service could make a neat complimentary service to the MEMS foundry offering from X-Fab Silicon, recently enhanced to include three-axis accelerometry and gyroscopy.