Thursday, November 21, 2002
After keeping a low profile in the marketplace, startup American Semiconductor Inc. here on Tuesday announced the formation of the company and disclosed plans to enter the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) foundry business.
American Semiconductor is already off to a flying start. In its first public announcement today, the Boise-based company said it has obtained funding for its proprietary, low-power SOI process from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Under the plan, the Missile Defense Agency has awarded the IC company a contract under which it will show the feasibility of its SOI process, dubbed FLEXFET SOI. The contracts calls for the chip maker to process low-power, rad-hard devices, based on the SOI process.
The company has other ambitions as well. "We plan to take the [SOI] technology beyond defense," said Douglas Hackler, president and CEO of the one-year-old startup, in an interview with SBN.
Established by former managers from Micron, M/A-Com, Zilog and other chip makers, American Semiconductor calls itself a foundry. The company does not have its own fab, but rather it outsources its wafer products to Zilog's 5-inch plant in Boise.
Long term, American Semiconductor plans to build its own fab, said Hackler, who was previously director of manufacturing for M/A-Com, a gallium-arsenide (GaAs) device specialist.
At the same time, the startup also claims it does not compete against the likes of Ibis, Soitec, or other SOI providers, which makes and sells SOI-enabled substrates to customers. Instead, American Semiconductor competes with Honeywell, X-Fab, and others, which provide SOI foundry services.
American Semiconductor's main focus is SOI, based on a proprietary fully-depleted technology, Hackler said. FLEXFET SOI is an SOI manufacturing process, based on double-gated MOSFETs and 4-terminal dynamic threshold metal oxide semiconductors (DTMOS).
By: DocMemory
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