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rick.merritt
In my opinion, China's fabless companies need to take a more global perspective, ...
collin
China fabless firm looks West as mobile slumps
Rick Merritt
11/26/2012 3:10 PM EST
Evaluating China's foundries
Union still tries to fly under the radar of big suppliers such as Maxim and TI. It expects some day it and other emerging analog companies in China such as Silergy Corp. (Hangzhou) will grow to compete head-on with the big boys.
In the meantime, it does its best to cope with a lack of seasoned design engineers.
“It’s tough to find experienced design engineers, but many are good enough for block- level work,” said Yang. “I have a technical background, so I cut big projects into small pieces and ask them to deal with the small pieces--the senior engineers integrate them together," he said.
“There are not so many experienced designers in China--that’s partly why Huawei and ZTE set up design centers in the U.S.,” he added. “There is more and more design activity in China now, but there is still a lot of room for improvement."
The same is true for China’s foundries. Yang compares China’s fabs to big ODMs like Foxconn that can handle manufacturing but have no significant design expertise.
“They buy a recipe from IBM or Imec and run an ODM business,” Yang said. “They don’t know how to change or tune their process which is OK for a digital design but it’s not enough for analog."
Yang said China's largest foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), has improved a great deal since naming Tzu-Yin Chiu CEO last year. "But [SMIC] copies TSMC’s and UMC’s business model and only focuses on digital 45-65nm processes—not analog,” Yang said.
Union makes some of its parts at Shanghai’s Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. “We just use them as they are, there’s no process tuning, so sometimes we have to trade off our performance for their process,” Yang said.
Mainly, Union goes to Taiwan’s UMC, attracted by its design support. “If our product fails, we sit together to debug the problems—the lack of that capability is a weakness of the Chinese foundries,” he said.
Meanwhile, Yang is keeping an eye on possible sources for the future—Korea’s Dongbu and Germany’s XFab, which supports organic semiconductors and SOI for high voltage parts. China’s analog foundry, CSMC Technologies Corp. (Wuxi), might get on Union’s list if it could develop its own expertise for tuning its processes, Yang said.
Related stories:
Union still tries to fly under the radar of big suppliers such as Maxim and TI. It expects some day it and other emerging analog companies in China such as Silergy Corp. (Hangzhou) will grow to compete head-on with the big boys.
In the meantime, it does its best to cope with a lack of seasoned design engineers.
“It’s tough to find experienced design engineers, but many are good enough for block- level work,” said Yang. “I have a technical background, so I cut big projects into small pieces and ask them to deal with the small pieces--the senior engineers integrate them together," he said.
“There are not so many experienced designers in China--that’s partly why Huawei and ZTE set up design centers in the U.S.,” he added. “There is more and more design activity in China now, but there is still a lot of room for improvement."
The same is true for China’s foundries. Yang compares China’s fabs to big ODMs like Foxconn that can handle manufacturing but have no significant design expertise.
“They buy a recipe from IBM or Imec and run an ODM business,” Yang said. “They don’t know how to change or tune their process which is OK for a digital design but it’s not enough for analog."
Yang said China's largest foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), has improved a great deal since naming Tzu-Yin Chiu CEO last year. "But [SMIC] copies TSMC’s and UMC’s business model and only focuses on digital 45-65nm processes—not analog,” Yang said.
Union makes some of its parts at Shanghai’s Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. “We just use them as they are, there’s no process tuning, so sometimes we have to trade off our performance for their process,” Yang said.
Mainly, Union goes to Taiwan’s UMC, attracted by its design support. “If our product fails, we sit together to debug the problems—the lack of that capability is a weakness of the Chinese foundries,” he said.
Meanwhile, Yang is keeping an eye on possible sources for the future—Korea’s Dongbu and Germany’s XFab, which supports organic semiconductors and SOI for high voltage parts. China’s analog foundry, CSMC Technologies Corp. (Wuxi), might get on Union’s list if it could develop its own expertise for tuning its processes, Yang said.
Related stories:
- Special Report: China Fabless Profile
- Is China's fabless model sustainable?
- Yoshida in China: Key to LTE winners is China Mobile
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rick.merritt
11/26/2012 8:01 PM EST
Felt some bumps in China's mobile market? Have your own opinions about China's foundries, analog startups, and/or shortage of seasoned designers? I'd love to hear from you.
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dylan.mcgrath
11/27/2012 12:19 PM EST
Union Semi is one of China's most established and successful fabless chip firms. So it's not surprising to see them taking this next step. But what about the dozens/hundreds of smaller fabless chip firms in China? How will they react to the lull in the domestic market?
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Chee Choy
11/27/2012 7:33 PM EST
Union knew very well they cannot compete the high end ones, so they choose the fancy way in terms of features and low price to attract western market. This is all about the same tactic of Makers of Chinese products, much of the time they are not emphasize reliabilities test in their manufacturing process. If they are quality products, their own Chinese should buying from them more and more. Right ?
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collin
11/28/2012 9:06 AM EST
Sir,
I am sorry to answer that your are completely wrong.
We Chinese only want to earn money as quickly as possible. Seldom company has the patience to wait for several years to improve their products' qulity.
Therefor, many companies from China only sell cheap procuts comparing with U.S.A or Europe or Japan' to the area in which common consumers pay much attention on price.
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rick.merritt
11/28/2012 2:22 PM EST
In my opinion, China's fabless companies need to take a more global perspective, pursue broad markets and embrace innovation as well as efficiency if they are ever going to get on the road to being truly successful. Union is among the few on this road.
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