Oki starts 'fab lite' trend in Japan

With Darwinian economics pushing IC companies to shed fat and focus on delivering core value, budding outsourcing partnerships like the one between Oki Electric Industry Co. and Faraday Technology Corp. may offer a clue to the strategies that some of Japan's larger companies might pursue.

Seeking to lower costs and speed design in the hope of increasing sales, Oki said in January it will hand off more work to Faraday, an ASIC design services house in Taiwan that works closely with foundry United Microelectronics Corp (UMC). Specifically, Oki is looking for access to Faraday 90nm and 65nm libraries that are based on the UMC process, as well as back-end design service support. The companies are also discussing a few 0.13µm projects.

The move is a continuation of a strategy Oki hatched in 2002, when it aligned itself with UMC's process design rules targeting 0.15µm. Oki was an early mover in Japan's outsourcing experiment, moving to a "fab lite" model in pursuit of a fabless paradigm for its system IC business.

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