Foundry Model

Foundry Model

The foundry model is a microelectronics engineering and business model that consists of a semiconductor fabrication plant or foundry, and an IC design operation.

The companies that only design chips are called fabless companies.
e.g.: AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm

The companies that manufacture chips are divided into two types:

Pure Play foundries
They don't design chips themselves, but they manufacture designs for other companies.

• e.g.: TSMC, UMC, GlobalFoundries, IBM (used to be)

Integrated Device Manufacturers
They are companies that design and manufacture chips in house.

• e.g.: Samsung, Intel, Texas Instruments