News Article
Tower Semiconductor seeks partnerships in India
Tower Semiconductor Limited, Israel, has held discussions with Indian chip fabrication and design companies. It is looking to establish technology co-operations with fabs and chip development partnerships with design firms, especially those with analog and mixed-signal expertise.
Tower focuses on specialised process technologies including CMOS image sensors (CIS), embedded Flash/ non-volatile memory, mixed-signal/power management chips and RF CMOS chips. Its Israel-based fabs offer standard and specialised technologies. Tower's Fab1 rolls out 16,000 6-inch wafers per month (wpm) using 1µm to 0.35µm processes. Its Fab2 turns out 24,000 8-inch wpm in 0.18µm to 0.13µm, with expansion to 30,000 wpm.
"We acquired the basic 0.18µm process from Toshiba and 0.13µm process from Freescale," said Rafi Nave, CTO, Tower Semiconductor. "We developed special-purpose features and tools around these processes. Our fabs manufacture at a technology level compatible with 67% of forecast global chip capacity in 2008. At present we don't have 90nm and 65nm processes, but are in discussions to acquire 90nm technology, and have the equipment base for such technology, as our 0.13µm tools can be converted to 90nm technology. We are one of the few specialty foundries which deliver with 0.13µm capacity and have a 90nm roadmap."
