Segment
The foundry model: who builds chips, and where
The industry's structure — who designs, who manufactures, and where the plants are — explains more about semiconductor supply than any single technology does. This segment covers the separation of design from manufacturing, the capital cycle that follows from it, and why the geography has become a policy question.
In one sentence
The foundry model is the industry structure in which chip design and chip manufacturing are performed by separate companies, with foundries operating fabs as a contract service to fabless designers.
For the industry's first decades, a chip company owned its fabs. The foundry model separated the two, and the consequences were enormous: designing a chip no longer required billions in capital, which opened the field to companies that could never have built a plant, and it concentrated manufacturing in a small number of firms operating at the scale that leading-edge economics demand.
That concentration is the fact everything else follows from. Advanced logic manufacturing is dominated by very few companies in very few places, capacity decisions are made years ahead of the demand they serve, and the resulting cycle swings hard in both directions.
How this breaks down
Split by structure, by capital cycle, and by geography.
- Foundry and capacitythis page
- Foundry vs IDMWho owns the fab, what that buys, and why the split changed the industry.Definition pageChokepoint
- Capacity cyclesLong lead times, fixed capital and volatile demand — the structural reason for the semiconductor cycle.Definition pageChokepoint
- Geography and controlsThe concentration of leading-edge manufacturing, and the rules that govern where equipment may go.Definition pageChokepoint
What this depends on
1 of these is marked as a chokepoint: a handful of qualified suppliers, a multi-year lead time, or a single geography.
- Supply chainChokepoint
Process equipment lead times
A fab is a building full of tools whose delivery times are measured in quarters to years; that sets how fast capacity can respond.
Wafer fabrication - Resource
Power, water and skilled workforce
Fab siting is constrained by utilities at industrial scale and by the availability of trained process engineers.
- Technology
A design ecosystem
Capacity is only worth what customers can design against it. Without kits, certified tools and licensable blocks a fab has wafers nobody can order.
Chip design
What depends on this
Other pages in this map that name Foundry and capacity as something they cannot do without.
- Commercial aerospace · Cabin interiorsIFE and connectivityModems, beamforming silicon and seat-box processors have to be supported and supportable for the life of an installation measured in decades.
- Commercial aerospace · Cabin interiorsLighting and powerLED drivers, power supply units and lighting controllers must be supportable for the life of the fit, which keeps them on parts the consumer market has moved past.
- Electric vehiclesAutonomyEvery sensor and processor must meet automotive reliability and safety requirements over a long service life.
- Artificial intelligenceEvery competitive accelerator is built on the most advanced process node available, from a very small number of fabs.
Companies across Foundry and capacity
Every company named on a step below this page, ordered by how many of those steps it appears at. Compiled from the pages themselves rather than written separately, so the two cannot disagree. Not a ranking and not a recommendation.
How these pages are written
Each page explains one technology in plain language, states what it depends on, and names companies by what they supply at that step. Company roles are described qualitatively and deliberately carry no market shares, revenue figures or rankings — those change faster than an explainer can, and a stale number is worse than none. Ticker links point at company pages on this site and are provided for reference only.
Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or a forecast. A company named on a page about a technology is not thereby a good investment, and the chokepoints described are structural facts about supply chains rather than predictions about prices. Technology moves; where a page describes something as unresolved or in development, that was true when it was written.
Plutux is not an investment adviser. Market data and AI-generated analysis are for information and education only, not investment advice. Disclaimer