Integrated device manufacturer

An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products.

IDM is often used to refer to a company which handles semiconductor manufacturing in-house, compared to a fabless semiconductor company, which outsources production to a third-party semiconductor fabrication plant.

Examples of IDMs are Intel, Samsung, and Texas Instruments, examples of fabless companies are AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, and examples of pure play foundries are GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and UMC.

Due to the dynamic nature of the semiconductor industry, the term IDM has become less accurate than when it was coined.

OSATs

The term OSATs means "outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers". OSATs have dominated IC packaging and testing.[1]

Fabless operations
Main article: Fabless manufacturing

The terms fabless (fabrication-less), foundry, and IDM are now used to describe the role a company has in a business relationship. For example, Freescale owns and operates fabrication facilities (fab) where it manufactures many chip product lines, as a traditional IDM would. Yet it is known to contract with merchant foundries for other products, as would fabless companies.

Manufacturers

Many electronic manufacturing companies engage in business that would qualify them as an IDM:

Reading

References
  1. http://semiengineering.com/tag/osats/ outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers (OSATs)
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