From Point A to Point B
Millions of silicon wafers make world tour before arriving in your MP3 player.
Small Parts, Big World
In a global economy, companies rely on technology-based logistical systems to track components as they move throughout the world. Often, parts stop in several countries to eventually integrate into a finished product.
An example of how products move globally is found at Samsung Austin Semiconductor. The South Korea-based electronics giant employs a complex system to track the millions of memory chips it produces in Texas annually.
“If a customer calls us, we can go back and find out everything about that chip.”
– Bill Cryer, Samsung
Eyeing the Product
Up to 1,200 Samsung memory chips can be housed on a single silicon wafer, which can then be built into various electronic components. Each wafer has a serial number, as does each of the chips it carries. The numbers are accessible when questions about product location and status transport arise, says Bill Cryer, a company spokesman.
“If a customer calls us, we can go back and find out everything about that chip,” he says.
The Process
Workers at Samsung’s Austin Semiconductor add memory chips to tiny, 300mm wafers in a 300,000-square-foot clean room. The product then loops back to Korea and China.
“About 75 percent go to Onyang, South Korea and the rest to Suzhou, China,” says Cryer.
“These plants cut the individual chips off the wafers, test and package the chips into the configurations required by our customers, mostly large electronic manufacturers, such as Dell Computer, Apple, HP, and others,” he says.
Keeping Track of Business
Radio frequency identification, or RFID, offers advanced methods for tracking goods. Information is stored on a microchip that is attached to an antenna. The antenna allows the chip to transmit data to a reader. The reader converts the radio waves to digital information that computers can read.
Dallas-based Texas Instruments, a leader in RFID technology development, uses it to track its own 12-inch wafer units. Today, 80-100 semiconductor manufacturers use RFID to track products and materials. FN
Samsung’s Texas Investment
Fabrication plant Fab 1 opened in 1997, bringing $1.4 billion in foreign investment and 1,100 jobs to Texas.
In 2007, Fab 2 opened, bringing in $3.5 billion at a 1.6 million-square-foot facility and creating 700 new jobs. This is the largest single instance of foreign direct investment in Texas history.
Photos courtesy of Samsung
300mm and 200mm silicon wafers leave Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsubishi Silicon Corporation plants; Japan’s Shin-Etsu; and MEMC Korea Company and LG Siltron.
Wafers arrive at the Fab 1 and Fab 2 facilities in Austin. The 200mm wafers go to Fab 1, where dynamic random access memory chips are placed. The 300mm wafers go to Fab 2, where NAND flash memory chips are produced.
The wafers containing chips are then sent to Samsung’s assembly and testing plants. From there, they ship worldwide to technology companies.
For more information about RFID, visit www.howstuffworks.com/rfid.htm.