United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) operates as an independent semiconductor foundry and a leader in semiconductor manufacturing process technologies worldwide.
The company's primary business is the manufacture, or 'fabrication', of semiconductors, sometimes called 'chips' or 'integrated circuits', for others. Using the company's own proprietary processes and techniques, it makes chips to the design specifications of its many customers. The company maintains a diversified customer base ac...
United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) operates as an independent semiconductor foundry and a leader in semiconductor manufacturing process technologies worldwide.
The company's primary business is the manufacture, or 'fabrication', of semiconductors, sometimes called 'chips' or 'integrated circuits', for others. Using the company's own proprietary processes and techniques, it makes chips to the design specifications of its many customers. The company maintains a diversified customer base across industries, including communication devices, consumer electronics, computer, and others, while continuing to focus on manufacturing for high growth, large volume applications, including networking, telecommunications, internet, multimedia, PCs and graphics. The company sells and markets mainly wafers which in turn are used in a number of different applications by its customers.
The company focuses on the development of leading manufacturing process technologies designed for mass production. The company provides high quality service based on its performance. The company's design service team actively cooperates with its customers and vendors to identify, early in the product/market cycle, the offerings needed to ensure that its coordinated offerings are available in a streamlined and easy-to-use manner. This ensures the timely delivery of service offerings from the earliest time in the customer design cycle, resulting in a shorter time-to-volume production. The company also provides its customers with real-time online access to production data and specifications, resulting in superior communication and efficiency. The company further addresses its customers' needs using its advanced technology and proven methodology to achieve fast cycle time, high yield, production flexibility and close customer communication. For example, the company selects and configures its clean rooms and equipment and develop its processes to maximize the flexibility in meeting and adapting to rapidly changing customer and industry needs.
The company's technology and service have attracted two principal types of foundry industry customers: fabless design companies and integrated device manufacturers. Fabless design companies design, develop and distribute proprietary semiconductor products but do not maintain internal manufacturing capacity. Instead, these companies depend on third party manufacturing sources. Integrated device manufacturers, in contrast, generally have integrated internally some or all functions-manufacturing, as well as design, development, sales and distribution.
The company's primary customers, in terms of its sales revenues, include premier integrated device manufacturers, such as Texas Instruments and Intel, plus leading fabless design companies, such as MediaTek, Realtek, and Novatek (Novatek Microelectronics Corp., Ltd.). In 2024, the company's top ten customers accounted for 55.6% of its operating revenues.
In 2014, the company established United Semiconductor (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., or USCXM, based in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China that focuses on 12-inch wafer foundry services.
On January 25, 2024, the company entered into a collaboration with Intel Corporation (the "Collaboration"), pursuant to which the parties agreed to jointly develop new 12nm related technology and commercialize such technology. In connection with such Collaboration, the parties granted each other IP licenses and rights necessary to carry out their respective obligations. The Collaboration is expected to create a 12nm semiconductor process platform to address high-growth markets such as mobile, communication infrastructure and networking. The Collaboration agreements set out terms to bring together Intel's at-scale U.S. manufacturing capacity and UMC's extensive foundry experience on mature nodes to enable an expanded process portfolio. The Collaboration also expects to offer global customers greater choice in their sourcing decisions with access to a more geographically diversified and resilient supply chain.
On April 2, 2024, the board of directors of its PRC subsidiary, Hejian, approved the disposal of its ownership in UnitedDS Semiconductor (Shandong) Co., Ltd. to SiS Semiconductor (Shandong) Co., Ltd., an associate of UMC, as part of its strategic plan. The disposal was completed in August 2024.
On December 18, 2024, the company entered into a corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) with Fengmiao I Offshore Wind Farm (Fengmiao I), developed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners' flagship fund, Copenhagen Infrastructure V. Pursuant to the CPPA, the company agreed to purchase more than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of power from Fengmiao I over at least 30 years, marking the largest renewable energy transaction that it has ever made.
Strategy
To maintain and enhance its position as a market leader, the company has adopted a business strategy with a focus on a partnership business model designed to accommodate its customers' business needs and to promote their interests as its partners.
The key elements of the company's strategy are to operate as a customer-driven foundry; build up customer-focused partnership business model; continue to focus on high growth applications and customers and actively explore new market opportunities; maintain its leading position in mass-producible semiconductor technology and selectively pursue strategic investments in new technologies; and maintain scale and capacity capabilities to meet customer requirements, with a focus on 12-inch wafer facilities for future expansion.
Services and Products
The company primarily engages in wafer fabrication for foundry customers. To optimize fabrication services for its customers, the company works closely with them as they finalize circuit design and contract for the preparation of masks to be used in the manufacturing process. The company also offers its customers turnkey solutions by providing subcontracted assembly and test services. This ability to deliver a variety of foundry services in addition to wafer fabrication enables the company to accommodate the needs of a full array of integrated device manufacturers, system companies and fabless design customers with different in-house capabilities.
Wafer manufacturing requires many distinct and intricate steps. Each step in the manufacturing process must be completed with precision in order for finished semiconductor devices to work as intended. The processes require taking raw wafers and turning them into finished semiconductor devices generally through five steps: circuit design, mask tooling, wafer fabrication, assembly and test. The services the company offers to its customers in each of these five steps are described below.
Circuit Design: At this initial design stage, the company's engineers generally work with its customers to ensure that their designs can be successfully and cost-effectively manufactured in the company's facilities. The company has assisted an increasing number of its customers in the design process by providing them with access to its partners' electronic design analysis tools, IP and design services, as well as by providing them with custom embedded memory macro-cells. In the company's Silicon Shuttle program, it offers customers and IP providers early access to actual silicon samples with their desired IP and content in order to enable early and rapid use of its advanced technologies. The Silicon Shuttle program is a multi-chip test wafer program that allows silicon verification of IP and design elements. In the Silicon Shuttle program, several different vendors can test their IP using a single mask set, greatly reducing the cost of silicon verification for the company and the participating vendors. In the company's alliances with them, it coordinates with leading suppliers of IP, design, and ASIC services to ensure their offerings are available to its customers in an integrated, easy-to-use manner, which matches customers' needs to the company's technologies. With a view to lowering customer design barriers, the company expanded its design support functions from conventional design support to adding IP development to complement third-party intellectual properties, and to provide customers with the widest range of silicon-verified choices. The company's offerings range from design libraries to basic analog mixed-mode intellectual properties, which, together, have helped shorten its customers' design cycle time.
Mask Tooling: The company's engineers generally assist its customers to design and/or obtain masks that are optimized for its advanced process technologies and equipment. Actual mask production is usually provided by independent third parties specializing in mask tooling.
Wafer Fabrication: The company's manufacturing service provides all aspects of the wafer fabrication process by utilizing a full range of advanced process technologies. During the wafer fabrication process, the company performs procedures in which a photosensitive material is deposited on the wafer and exposed to light through the mask to form transistors and other circuit elements comprising a semiconductor. The unwanted material is then etched away, leaving only the desired circuit pattern on the wafer. As part of its wafer fabrication services, the company also offers wafer probing services, which test, or probe, individual die on the processed wafers and identify dice that fail to meet required standards. The company prefers to conduct wafer probing internally to obtain speedier and more accurate data on manufacturing yield rates.
Assembly and Testing: The company offers its customers turnkey solutions by providing the option to purchase finished semiconductor products that have been assembled and tested. The company outsources assembly and test services to leading assembly and test service providers, including Siliconware Precision Industries Co., Ltd., or Siliconware, and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. in Taiwan. After final testing, the semiconductors are shipped to its customers' designated locations.
Customers and Markets
The company focuses on providing a high level of customer service in order to attract customers and maintain their ongoing loyalty. The company's culture emphasizes responsiveness to customer needs with a focus on flexibility, speed and accuracy throughout its manufacturing and delivery processes. The company's customer-oriented approach is especially evident in two types of services: customer design development services and manufacturing services.
The company works closely with its customers throughout the design development and prototyping processes. The company's design support team closely interacts with customers and IP vendors to facilitate the design process and to identify their specific requirements for IP offerings. The company is responsive to its customers' requirements in terms of overall turn-around time and production time-to-market by, for example, helping its customers streamline their IP offering processes and delivering prototypes in a timely and easy-to-use fashion. The company also maintains flexibility and efficiency in its technical capability and respond quickly to its customers' design changes.
For IP offerings, the company works with several leading IP vendors from digital, memory and analog fields in the semiconductor industry to deliver quality IP blocks that have been silicon validated using its advanced processes. The company's alliances with major electronic design automation vendors provide its customers with digital/analog reference design procedures and easy-to-use design solutions.
As a design moves into manufacturing production, the company continues to provide ongoing customer support through all phases of the manufacturing process. The local account manager works with the company's customer service representative to ensure the quality of its services, drawing upon its marketing and customer engineering support teams as required.
The company offers an online service, MyUMC, which gives its customers easy access to its foundry services by providing a total online supply chain solution. MyUMC offers 24-hour access to detailed account information such as manufacturing, engineering and design support documents through each customer's own customized start page. The features that are available to customers through MyUMC include viewing the status of orders from the start of production to the final shipping stages; designing layouts to shorten customers' tape out time; collecting customer engineering requests; gathering and downloading documents for design purposes; and accessing online in real-time the same manufacturing data used by its fab engineers.
The company also has system-to-system connecting services to provide direct data exchange between its system and its customers' systems. These services, which include the company's Design Support Online Services, facilitate its design collaborations with its customers to help reduce the cost of chip designs and reduce the time to market.
In addition, the company has established a data-driven advanced semiconductor smart manufacturing system to provide world-class quality production, ensure information security and service quality, as well as improve customer satisfaction, operational and R&D efficiency. The company achieved this by integrating a spectrum of innovative digital technologies, including Internet of Things, big data, cloud, artificial intelligence and information technology, and its enterprise information and semiconductor expertise.
The company's main sales office is located in Taiwan, which is in charge of its sales activities in Asia. United Microelectronics (Europe) BV, its wholly-owned subsidiary based in Amsterdam, assists its sales to customers in Europe. The company's sales in North America are made through UMC Group (USA), its subsidiary located in Silicon Valley. The company also has sales offices in China, Japan and Korea to support its customers in those regions.
The company advertises in trade journals, organize technology seminars, hold a variety of regional and international sales conferences and attend a number of industry trade fairs to promote its products and services. The company also publishes a corporate newsletter for its customers.
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2024, the company held 7,210 U.S. issued patents and 8,350 patents issued outside of the United States. The company has entered into various patent cross-licenses with major technology companies, including a number of leading international semiconductor companies, such as International Business Machines Corporation and AVAGO.
Research and Development
In 2024, the company spent NT$15,616 million (U.S.$476 million) on research and development.
History
United Microelectronics Corporation was founded in 1980. The company was incorporated in Republic of China (R.O.C.) in 1980.