Industry Expert Blogs

EETimes just posted an article written by European editor Peter Clarke with an interview of Malcolm Penn, founder of and principal analyst with Future Horizons. Penn notes that 4Q 2010 shows the first semiconductor fab capacity growth in six quarters and that IDMs are increasingly relying on foundries to make chips rather than adding native IDM fab capacity. He then notes that TSMC has raised their prices as a direct result of the industry’s growing dependence on TSMC’s output so that the company wishes to be “paid full value for all the risk investment they have made.” “They are tired of being paid $4 per square centimeter of silicon when their customers get paid $9 per square centimeter,” he says.

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