SEMATECH

SEMATECH

Type	Joint Venture
Founded	1987
Headquarters	Austin, Texas
Key people	Mike Polcari, President and CEO
Website	www.sematech.org

SEMATECH (SEmiconductor MAnufacturing TECHnology) is a non-profit consortium that performs basic research into semiconductor manufacturing. It was conceived of in 1986, formed in 1987, and began operating in 1988 as a partnership between the United States government and 14 U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers to solve common manufacturing problems and regain competitiveness for the U.S. semiconductor industry that had been surpassed by Japanese industry in the mid-1980s. SEMATECH was funded over 5 years by public subsidies coming from the US Department of Defense via the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a total of $500 million.

Following a determination by SEMATECH's Board of Directors to eliminate matching funds from the U.S. government after 1996, the organization's focus shifted from the U.S. semiconductor industry to the larger international semiconductor industry, abandoning the initial U.S. government-initiative.^[1][2] During the mid 90's the organization's name was changed to International Sematech to reflect its international composition and in September 2004, changed back to SEMATECH. Nearly half of the 15 current member companies in the SEMATECH consortia are non-US corporations.

SEMATECH currently has three subsidiaries, the Advanced Technology Development Facility (ATDF) established in 2004, the Advanced Materials Research Center (AMRC), and the International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI).

Members

Members as of October 2006:

1. GlobalFoundries, USA
2. Freescale, USA
3. HP, USA
4. IBM, USA
5. Infineon/Qimonda, Germany
6. Intel, USA
7. Micron, USA
8. NEC, Japan
9. Panasonic, Japan
10. NXP (Philips), Netherlands
11. Renesas, Japan
12. Samsung, South Korea
13. Spansion, USA
14. Texas Instruments, USA
15. TSMC, Taiwan

External links

• SEMATECH homepage
• ATDF homepage

References