Abstract
The project “Two Trillion and Twin Star” launched in 2002 chose Semiconductor and Display as the key component industries whose output value both hit NTD one Taiwan’s enterprises have a great performance in the global semiconductor industry. TSMC and UMC, respectively ranking 1st and 2nd on the IC manufacturing around the global, lead the prosperity of the semiconductor supply chain development in Taiwan. Taiwan’s semiconductor Industry has distinguished itself by its complete industry clusters to incorporate from IC design manufacturing to packaging and test With the recent economic crisis, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry also encounters the most serious challenges. Foundry manufacturing companies hit the record low utilization, and also the record high annual loss to NTD 112.5 billions as One of the biggest challenges to Taiwan DRAM industry is that we do not have fundamental research and development seeded in Taiwan. However, semiconductor R&D engineering costs are rising at the faster rate than IC sales. According to a new report from IC insights, R&D and engineering expenditures increased at a compound average growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7％ between 1990 and 2007, while semiconductor sales grew at a CAGR of 9.9％ in the 17 years period. The next generation’s device development costs over US$2-3 billions and becomes not affordable for most of IC manufacturer players. R&D consortium becomes main stream for today’s semiconductor process development. In this thesis, we evaluate the possible ways for semiconductor IC manufacturers to lower their cost by R&D outsourcing; and introduce the revolutionary High Productivity Combinatorial (HPC™) Technology, and discuss how it works to redefine the IC industry R&D. We also use a case company as a study pointing to exam its business model and product development and sales strategy.