Semiconductor Careers

Industry Overview

The semiconductor industry focuses on designing, manufacturing, and selling semiconductor chips (integrated circuits). These chips are the building blocks of modern electronics, found in everything from smartphones and computers to cars and medical devices. The semiconductor industry has a complex ecosystem which includes the following components:

Chip Design:

Fabless Companies specialize in designing integrated circuits (chips) but outsource their manufacturing to other companies.
Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) design and manufacture their own chips.
Chip Intellectual Property (IP) Cores design reusable components of chips, that can be licensed by other companies.
Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Tools are software used to design and verify complex integrated circuits.

Chip Manufacturing:

Foundries specialize in manufacturing chips designed by other companies.
Wafer Fab Equipment (WFE) companies produce the highly specialized equipment used to manufacture chips.
Specialized Materials and Chemicals companies provide the raw materials and chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing, such as silicon wafers and various gases.

Component Assembly, Testing, and Packaging:

Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) companies provide packaging and testing services for semiconductor chips.

Fabrication Supporting Components:

Research and Development (R&D)
Materials suppliers

You can view a map of the semiconductor ecosystem here.

Major Employers

Major employers in the semiconductor industry include:

Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) - Companies that design, manufacture, and sell their own chips (e.g., Intel, Samsung, Micron).
Foundries - Companies that solely manufacture chips designed by other companies (e.g., TSMC, GlobalFoundries).
Fabless Semiconductor Companies - Companies that design chips but outsource manufacturing (e.g., NVIDIA, Qualcomm).
Equipment and Materials Suppliers - Companies that provide equipment, chemicals, and other materials used in semiconductor manufacturing.

Industry Information

You can learn more about the semiconductor and microelectronics industry at the sources below: