Chipmakers

Chipmakers are companies involved in the design, manufacture, or provisioning of semiconductor chips. They can be categorized by their role in the supply chain as integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) that design and produce their own chips, fabless firms that design chips but outsource manufacturing, and pure‑play foundries that only fabricate chips for other companies. The market includes memory manufacturers and logic chip producers, with different business models and capabilities.

IDMs such as Intel and Samsung Electronics maintain their own fabrication facilities and supply chains. Fabless companies such as Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm focus on chip design and rely on foundries to fabricate their products. Pure‑play foundries such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), GlobalFoundries, SMIC, and Samsung’s dedicated foundry arm provide manufacturing capacity for many customers, including both fabless and IDMs.

Manufacturing involves several stages on silicon wafers, including photolithography, deposition, etching, dopant implantation, and planarizing processes, followed by testing and packaging. Advanced production uses increasingly small process nodes and, in many cases, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography supplied by ASML. Process node names (for example 7nm, 5nm, 3nm) are used to describe generations of technology, though the nomenclature blends marketing with engineering progress. Fabrication requires large capital investment in tools, clean rooms, and supply chains for materials and equipment.

Economically, chipmakers compete on process technology, yield, capacity, and time-to-market. TSMC is the world’s leading pure‑play foundry, while Intel and Samsung operate as IDMs with significant foundry activities. Memory producers include SK Hynix, Micron, and Samsung. The industry faces ongoing cyclic demand, geopolitical considerations, and continued pressure to innovate in packaging, power efficiency, and AI accelerators.