U.S. chip foundry SkyWater is quadrupling its capacity through a recent acquisition of Infineon’s fab in Austin, Texas, SkyWater SVP Ross Miller told EE Times in an interview. He expects his company to buy more capacity as IDMs like Infineon go fab light and even fabless.
On June 30, SkyWater finalized the acquisition of Infineon’s 200 mm facility, which it will open to foundry customers, increasing output for what it calls “foundational” chips on nodes from 130 nm to 65 nm. Customers like Infineon, the Department of Defense (DoD), and even quantum-computing companies like D-Wave will use the fab, according to Miller.
“This will about quadruple the total manufacturing capacity to about 400,000 wafers a year,” Miller said. The acquisition provides key processing capabilities, such as copper back-end of line (BEOL), where metal interconnects are built to connect individual devices on a chip.
“Those mixed-signal technologies are workhorse technologies,” Miller said. “Now that SkyWater has gained access through this licensing agreement (with Infineon), it’s something that’s going to bring tremendous value.”
To some, foundational chips are known as legacy chips, a business that’s at risk of being taken over by China. SkyWater sees an opportunity.
“The vast majority of the capacity that serves that segment has been offshored,” Miller said. “Microcontrollers, embedded electronics, power management ICs and sensors — all that stuff, 80% to 90% — is produced overseas, a lot of it in China and Taiwan. It leaves domestic industries, both on the national-defense side and the industrial side, in a tough position. This transaction brings solutions to areas that really are underserved.”
China can turn legacy chips into a weapon in the same way that the nation has cut off supplies of rare earths, vital to the electronics supply chain, in the ongoing tech war with the U.S., notes Dan Hutcheson, vice chair at TechInsights.
“As China gains share in mature technology by undercutting prices, it will develop an ability to retaliate by restricting access like it has done recently with restricting supply of critical materials,” Hutcheson told EE Times.
Leaders at automotive and industrial control companies, as well as chip designers in the U.S., see a need for a secure domestic supply, Miller said.
“With the Department of Commerce Section 232 investigation, the U.S. Government also recognizes there’s reason to hold serious concern right now,” he noted. That investigation is expected to conclude in a few weeks. U.S. tariffs on chip imports resulting from the investigation could make SkyWater’s U.S. fab more cost-effective, Hutcheson noted.
The increased interest in securing a U.S. supply of foundational chips hasn’t translated into sales figures for SkyWater. “That’s not something that’s hit the bottom line yet,” Miller said. “What we see is activity now for access to capacity and the need and desire to move forward with transferring technologies and ramping them up.”
Demand from Infineon and the DoD will help fill the Texas fab.
“We’ve executed a multi-year supply agreement (with Infineon) valued at more than a billion dollars,” Miller said. “They’re heavily loading the fab over the next four years. Beyond that, we don’t have any firm contractual obligations, but I really do see this as a long-term partnership.”
SkyWater is considering acquiring additional capacity from IDMs like Infineon, which are reducing their own capacity.
“Here in the U.S., not only is there this trend of onshoring, but IDMs continue to transition to more of a fab-light or fabless type of a model,” Miller said. “We expect that trend to continue. That, along with on-shoring, is a composite factor that will really create additional capacity. We’ve been watching that closely. That’s a consolidation opportunity we think is out there.”
Google and quantum customers
SkyWater says that its focus on providing technology as a service differentiates it from much larger foundries like TSMC. The strategy is gaining traction, according to the company.
“We have a long-standing relationship with Google and have partnered on a number of different projects,” Miller said. “One that we’ve probably most openly spoke about was a few years ago to create the first open-source PDK for mixed-signal technologies. We have partnered with Google over the years on multiple projects.”
SkyWater believes it has become the leading foundry supporting quantum hardware innovation.
“We have a number of programs,” Miller said. “Only a small fraction of them are ones that we can talk about openly, but they include D-Wave and PsiQuantum. There are several others. That’s just an example of how a different business model applied to this mature infrastructure really can be instrumental in driving state-of-the-art innovation.”
Most of SkyWater’s work is in the superconducting and photonics domains.
“We’re helping customers that come in with a design concept, that need superconducting film development, they need photonic waveguides developed to a certain specification,” Miller said. “We’ll work hand-in-hand with customers to take their architectural concepts and then design a process flow that can be used to produce that device. It’s distinctly different from a traditional foundry engagement on a mature, qualified CMOS flow. Here, in many cases, there are no rules. There’s no standard, there’s no device spec. We’re creating that process with the customers.”
DoD
SkyWater expects the newly acquired Austin fab to help meet the needs of the DoD as the U.S. military continues to wean itself of Asian-made chips that are a security vulnerability.
“Every new mission system that’s operationalized is increasingly dependent on microelectronics,” Miller said. “A lot of components that go into DoD mission systems are procured from off-the-shelf sources, and a huge percent of them are coming out of China and Taiwan. Is that the right thing? Does that present a vulnerability? We think in many cases it probably does. This new capacity, the IP that’s being brought to market through this agreement, is directly responsive to whatever that future state solution is going to be.”
Many chips, which are the workhorse components next to advanced-node chips, could be counterfeit or compromised in some way, according to Miller.
“That’s pretty concerning,” he said.