TI's Ritchie Sees Expanded Fab Strategy
Texas Instruments will use its Richardson fab to expand production of high-volume battery management, touch screen, GPS, and other high-volume analog ICs, said TI senior vice president Kevin Ritchie. TI executives debated how to use the RFAB shell, then opted for 300 mm analog production when the Qimonda 300 mm toolset became available earlier this year, he said.
David Lammers, News Editor -- Semiconductor International, 10/1/2009
Texas Instruments Inc. (TI, Dallas) is combining an environmentally futuristic fab building with a second-hand toolset at its newest fab. TI will need to buy epitaxial deposition and a few other "minor" tools to fit out its fab in Richardson, Texas. But nearly all of the equipment for the first phase of the RFAB will come from the closed Qimonda DRAM fab near Richmond, Va., said Kevin Ritchie, TI's senior vice president of manufacturing and technology.
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Kevin Ritchie, senior v.p., TI |
Ritchie, who manages TI's worldwide fab network, detailed TI's plans for the Richardson fab, which is expected to be the first analog fab using 300 mm wafers when it begins production late next year. Purchased for $172.5M, TI will take possession of the 300 mm tools in mid-October and immediately begin moving the equipment into the RFAB, located 11 miles north of Dallas.
"At this point in time, only six delta tools will be required to be purchased, outside of what was at Qimonda," Ritchie said. Memory manufacturing does not require epitaxial deposition, he noted. And TI will purchase diffusion under field (DUF) furnaces, needed to deposit and diffuse the liquid dopants used in BiCMOS IC fabrication. Beyond the Qimonda tools, he said, "there are just a few minor tools that we will need after that to finish off Phase 1."
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The RFAB shell was completed in 2006, with resource recycling as a major goal. |
The RFAB shell was completed in 2006 with 1.1 million ft2 of total space. About one-third of that space will be used in the first phase, which will be capable of up to 450 wpd, which translates into ~13,500 wpm.
The new fab will start out with TI's 0.25 µm LBC7 analog process, now deployed at TI's DMOS 5 fab in Dallas and at the Miho 8 fab in Japan. Most of TI's new analog ICs are designed to the LBC7 BiCMOS process, which will be followed by 0.18 and 0.13 µm processes.
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TI will start production at the RFAB with its quarter-micron BiCMOS process. |
Ritchie pointed out that 3G cell phones require improved battery management, DC/DC converters, battery charging ICs, custom analog GPS chips, and analog touch screen controllers. The RFAB also will be used to meet growing demand for audio amplifiers, hard disk drive servo ICs, and digital-analog and analog-digital converters.
"The LBC7 process already is being used for products which sell by the tens of millions per quarter; products that can benefit from high-volume manufacturing using 300 mm equipment," Ritchie said. The RFAB will start out with the stable LBC7 process late next year, and will begin to earn revenues for TI in 2011 and beyond. In Phase 1, TI estimates the RFAB will produce ~$1B worth of analog products annually.
Strategy shifted
In early 2007, TI announced that it would rely on foundries to help define its leading-edge logic process, a decision that reduced its logic technology development staff from ~600 to ~185 people today. Also at that time, TI was changing its strategy from a reliance on baseband and other digital cell phone ICs to a renewed focus on high-volume and high-performance analog parts, including power management ICs. The analog technology development staff was sharply increased, and TI executives began to consider their manufacturing options, ranging from using RFAB as a 200 mm facility, or buying more equipment for existing TI 200 mm fabs.
"At that point in time, we knew we wouldn't use RFAB for logic, but we had no firm plan," Ritchie said. "We thought about putting 200 mm equipment in. With the Qimonda deal, we saw an opportunity to move out ahead of other companies to 300 mm wafers."
The "hellacious downturn" in Q4 2008 and Q1 2009 also played a role in the decision-making process. With expansion plans on hold and Qimonda 200 and 300 mm toolsets coming on the used equipment market, TI executives reconsidered their options. "When the downturn hit, we put 200 mm expansion plans on hold. Then as we came out of the downturn in Q2 and Q3, we saw that our need for more capacity would be delayed by a year. When Qimonda filed for bankruptcy, we looked at both their 200 and 300 mm facilities to see which made more sense. As we were looking at the tools, we clearly saw that the 300 mm tools made more sense in the longer run."
Ritchie said analog manufacturing is a different beast than logic IC production, requiring close attention to parametric accuracies rather than defect densities. The LBC7 process is optimized for power efficiency: low ON resistance (Rsp), high current-carrying capabilities, and low leakage.
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RFAB will meet demand for power management and other analog ICs. |
Several years ago, TI managers benchmarked its DMOS 6 logic fab against the leading Asian foundries, and found TI's yields and costs in need of improvement. With analog, Ritchie said, "the scenario is very different. Analog involves a wide product diversity, so it is much more difficult to get a 1:1 benchmark as we can do in the logic space."
Also, "analog products yield at 95%, plus or minus a few percentage points, so there is much less opportunity for differentiation. And foundries don't do as much direct analog work, which makes a 1:1 comparison more difficult," he said.
Capacity expansion
TI currently operates a high-volume 6 in. fab in Sherman, Texas, (SFAB) with 1-2 µm design rules. DMOS 5, in Dallas, is a 200 mm facility that builds advanced analog along with logic products, backed up by a "sister factory" in Miho, Japan, using similar design rules. TI operates other analog fabs in Houston; Freising, Germany; and Hiji, Japan.
TI recently closed a 4 in. fab in Tucson, Ariz., Ritchie said, but has no plans to close any other fabs. "We are looking at RFAB as an addition to capacity, not a replacement or reshuffle. These products go to all the big companies in the world, which requires multiple fabs in order to have two factories qualified and running for those customers."
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