Amkor/Anam and Texas Instruments extend cooperation on deep submicron process technology for advanced semiconductor manufacturing

Amkor/Anam and Texas Instruments extend cooperation on deep submicron process technology for advanced semiconductor manufacturing

Keywords: Amkor, Anam, Texas

Amkor Technology Inc. and Anam Semiconductor, Inc. today announced a new long-term cooperative agreement with Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) for the production of advanced logic semiconductors.

Under terms of the agreement, Anam Semiconductor and Amkor Technology will replicate TI's 0.5 micron metal pitch, traditional metalization process in Anam Semiconductor's wafer fabrication facility located in Buchon, Republic of Korea.

The Anam wafer lab is producing 25,000 wafers per month, using 1.0-micron metal pitch and 0.7-micron metal pitch processes. Anam is expanding the facility's capacity to enable production of 30,000 200mm wafers per month. This includes 0.35µm and 0.25µm gate length semiconductor processes that Amkor previously licensed from TI, in addition to the 0.18µm process replicated at the plant earlier this year. Amkor sells wafers, tested die and fully packaged semiconductors based upon these process technologies. Full production of 0.18µm technology began in Q4 2000.

The aggressiveness of a semiconductor process technology is determined from a combination of both the gate length and the metal pitch. Gate length helps determine the speed and robustness of the individual transistors, and the metal pitch determines how compact the overall design can be. A metal pitch is the overall width, measured in microns, of a metal line and single adjacent space. Highly dense semiconductor processes facilitate single chip and system in package (SiP) products.