Customer centric chips [semiconductor manufacturing]

The manufacturing of semiconductors has always been a difficult process, where long throughput times of up to three months and chaotic manufacturing processes have created an industry that struggles to react effectively to market changes. Intel has adopted its mirror approach, whereby all of its fabs are identical, allowing the company to move product from one facility to another. Constrained by less manufacturing capacity, AMD has taken another route and created an entirely new manufacturing model that emphasises speed, accuracy and agility to allow it to better respond to customer needs. In this paper, we introduce the 'automated precision manufacturing' (APM) concept. It allows the company to react to market needs, gives it a more rapid introduction of advanced technologies as well as achieving better quality and higher efficiencies.