To support increased customer demand, Kulim, Malaysia-based semiconductor wafer foundry Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. reported it has increased production capacity of its manufacturing fab by 20 percent to 33,500 wafer starts per month.
A portion of the capacity is dedicated to the CL130G 0.13-micron copper process, with the remainder capable of supporting designs at the 0.18- and 0.16-micron technology nodes, the company says. Silterra also says it plans to complete its Fab 1 expansion to reach 4
0,000 wafer starts per month of capacity by the end of the year.
Silterra’s CL160G, a cost reduction version of the company’s high volume CL180G process, provides 15 to 19 percent area advantage to existing 0.18-micron designs, and the linear shrink methodology does not require customers to redesign their products in order to enjoy the cost savings. Silterra has ramped up volume production of several consumer applications in the process.
Most of Silterra’s future fab expansion will be in advanced copper metallization capacity for its major foundry matched CL130G process. Volume production is expected to begin later this year.
In addition to the high demand for its logic processes, Silterra says its high density, high voltage process technologies are also running at peak capacity, including the company’s CL180H32 0.18-micron 32V process featuring a very high density four square micron SRAM cell for high volume mobile handset display driver applications.
Bruce Gray, CEO of Silterra said in a statement, "We anticipated the increase in customer demand and expanded our capacity accordingly. Even with the added capacity, our fab utilization rate is over 95 percent right now."
"Our plan is to build out the fab to the maximum capacity of 40,000 wafer starts per month with state-of-the-art 0.13-micron equipment by year end. We are ramping up volume on the 0.16-micron node, which will contribute to our revenue significantly for the rest of the year. The present indi