STMicroelectronics

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STMicroelectronics
Type	Public : Milan Borsa Italiana: STM, New-York NYSE: STM, and Paris Euronext: STM)
Founded	1957 as Società Generale Semiconduttori, 1987 as SGS-Thomson
Headquarters	Geneva, Switzerland
Key people	Carlo Bozotti, Président and CEO since 2005 Alain Dutheil, COO since 2005 Pasquale Pistorio, CEO between 1987 and 2005
Industry	Semiconductors
Products	Integrated circuits for specific applications, Memories (flash, EEPROM), Microcontrollers, smartcards, analog circuits power ICs , etc.
Revenue	In 2006 : $9.85 billion USD net earnings = $782 million
Employees	~50 000 (2005)
Slogan	Service & Technology
Website	www.st.com

STMicroelectronics is an Italian-French manufacturer of electronics and semiconductors. The company's headquarters are in Switzerland.

Contents 1 History 2 Shareholders and revenues 3 Competitors 4 Products 5 Company organization 6 Products groups and R&D 7 Manufacturing facilities 8 Major sites 8.1 Milan, Italy 8.2 Catania, Sicily, Italy 8.3 Grenoble, France 8.4 Rousset, France 8.5 Ang Mo Kio, Singapore 8.6 Greater Noida, India 8.7 Phoenix, Arizona 8.8 Tours, France 8.9 Carrollton, Texas 8.10 Other sites 8.11 Closed sites 8.12 Future locations 9 See also 10 External links

[edit] History

The ST Group was formed in June 1987 from the merger of two semiconductor companies Società Generale Semiconduttori (SGS) Microelettronica of Italy and Thomson Semiconducteurs, the semiconductor arm of France's Thomson. In May 1998, the company changed its name from SGS-THOMSON to STMicroelectronics following the withdrawal of Thomson SA.

SGS Microelettronica and Thomson Semiconducteurs were long-established semiconductor companies:

• SGS Microelettronica was previously called named SGS-ATES (Aquila Tubi E Semiconduttori) and was formed through the 1972 merger of Aziende Tecnica ed Elettronica del Sud (founded in 1963) and Società Generale Semiconduttori (founded in 1957 by Adriano Olivetti).

• Thomson Semiconducteurs was created in 1982 through the merger of:
  • the semiconductor activities of the French electronic company Thomson.
  • Mostek, a US company founded in 1969 by some of the founders of Texas Instruments.
  • Silec, founded in 1977.
  • Eurotechnique founded in 1979 in Rousset, Bouches-du-Rhône, France as a joint-venture between the French company Saint-Gobain and the American company National Semiconductor.
  • EFCIS, founded in 1977.
  • SESCOSEM, founded in 1969.

While trading as SGS-THOMSON and STMicroelectronics, the company has particpated in the consolidation of the semiconductor industry, with acquisitions incuding:

• The 1989 purchase of British company Inmos known for its transputer microprocessors from parent Thorn EMI.

• The 1994 purchase of Canada-based Nortel's semiconductor activities.

• The 2002 acquisition of Alcatel's Microelectronics division, which along with the incorporation of smaller ventures such as UK company, Synad Ltd, helped ST expand into the Wireless-LAN market.

[edit] Shareholders and revenues

After the merger of SGS and Thomson Semiconducteurs, the balance was maintained between Italan and French shareholders, respectively. On 8 December 1994, the company completed its initial public offering. Since then, shares have been traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: STM) and on Euronext, Paris (Euronext: STM). Since June 1998, ST has also been listed in Milan on Borsa Italiana.

In 2005, the balance of the shares is held by STMicroelectronics N.V. Of the shareholders:

• 72.4% are public.
• 27.6% are split 50/50 between Italian shareholders (40/60 between the Italian company Finmeccanica and the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti) and French shareholders (the French company Areva).

The holding company, STMicroelectronics N.V. is registered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, but the corporate headquarters, as well as the headquarters for Europe and for Emerging Markets, are based in Geneva, Switzerland. The company’s US Headquarters are in Carrollton, Texas. Headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region are based in Singapore and Japanese operations are headquartered in Tokyo. Finally, the recently-established “Greater China” region that includes Hong-Kong, China and Taiwan is headquartered in Shanghai.

Net revenues by year (sources : ST financial reports from www.st.com)

Year	Net revenues (Millions $)	Net profit (Millions $)
2006	9 854	782
2005	8 876	266
2004	8 756	601
2003	7 234	253
2002	6 270	429
2001	6 356	257
2000	7 813	1 452
1999	5 056	547
1998	4 247	411
1997	4 019	406
1996	4 122	625
1995	3 554	526
1994	2 645	362
1993	2 037	160
1992	1 568	3
1991	1 374	(102)

[edit] Competitors

After its creation by merger in 1987, SGS-Thomson was ranked 14th among the top 20 semiconductors suppliers with sales of around US$850 million. By 2005, STMicroelectronics was ranked fifth, behind Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Toshiba, but ahead of Infineon, Renesas, NEC, NXP, and Freescale. ST is the largest European semiconductors supplier, ahead of Infineon and NXP. For more information, refer to the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Market Share Ranking Year by Year.

[edit] Products

The company manufactures a large portfolio of products including:

• Digital consumer application specific standard products (ASSPs) like coders/decoders MPEG-2/MPEG-4 .
• Wireless ASICs.
• Computer peripheral ASIC (such as hard disk drives and printers).
• Automotive application specific standard products (ASSPs).
• Non-volatile memory including NOR and NAND Flash memory
• Smartcards
• Analog and power integrated circuits (ICs)
• Microcontrollers
• Discrete semiconductor products
• Electronic Passports

Since 2001 ST has been involved in developing MEMS. This research and development was initially done at ST's Castelletto site but since its closure in June 2006, MEMS activities have moved to the Agrate main fab.

STMicroelectronics has largely stayed out of the volatile markets for DRAM and PC microprocessors except for a failed attempt in 1994 to launch compatible Intel x486 microprocessors in partnership with the American company Cyrix and the 1995 production of the Cyrix M1 microprocessor, as a competitor to the Intel Pentium family.

The company has around 1500 customers. The most important are^{[citation needed]}:

• Automotive equipment suppliers Bosch, DaimlerChrysler, Visteon, and Siemens
• cellular phones suppliers Nokia, Motorola
• printer suppliers Hewlett-Packard
• telecom infrastructure suppliers Alcatel and Nortel Networks
• hard disk drives suppliers Seagate Technology and Western Digital
• consumer electronics suppliers Nintendo, Philips, Sony, and Thomson
• industrial equipments supplier Siemens
• electronic components distributor Arrow Electronics
• Logitech mice and cameras

[edit] Company organization

The company is organized around four divisions:

• Sales (divided into five regions, Europe, US, Asia-Pacific, Japan, China and emerging markets). There are 78 sales offices in 36 countries.
• Manufacturing facilities
• Corporate R&D
• Product groups

[edit] Products groups and R&D

ST consists of five Product Groups. Each group is composed of several divisions or business units. Each division is responsible for the design, industrialization, manufacturing (using the ST manufacturing facilities) and marketing for its own product portfolio. Operations are assisted by a central R&D organisation and the local sales offices. The Prouct Groups are:

• Home Personal Communication: Consumer, multimedia, wireless and wireline products.
• Memory Product Group: stand-alone memory chips (EEPROM, Flash memories (nand & nor), serial flash memories and smartcards).
• Automotive Product Group: Chips related to the automotive industry (car body, power train, safety, etc).
• Micro, Power and Analog Group: Analog and power circuits and microcontrollers.
• Computer Peripheral Group: Chips for computer peripherals (hard disk drive controllers, printers, etc).
• Front End Technology and Manufacturing: research and development. The company as a whole has 16 research and development units and 39 design and application centers.

[edit] Manufacturing facilities

Unlike so-called fabless semiconductor companies, STMicroelectronics owns and operates its own semiconductor wafer fabs. The company owned five 8" wafer fabs and one 12" wafer fab in 2006.^{[citation needed]} Most of the production is scaled at 0.18µm, 0.13µm, 90nm and 65nm (measurements of gate transistor length). STMicroelectronics also owns back-end plants, where silicon dies are assembled and bonded into plastic or ceramic packages.

[edit] Major sites

Major sites:^{[citation needed]}:

[edit] Milan, Italy

Employing 6,000 staff, the Milan facilities match Grenoble in importance:

• Agrate, employs around 4000 staff and as Grenoble, is a historical base of the company (ex SGS). The site has several fab lines (including an 8" fab) and an R&D center. Many divisional headquarters are located in Agrate.
• Castelletto, employs 300 to 400 staff and hosts some divisions and R&D centers.

[edit] Catania, Sicily, Italy

This plant was launched in 1961 by ATES. Semiconductor activities (initially Germanium) started with licensing agreements with RCA of the US. Employing 5,000 staff, the site has two major wafer fabs:

• an 8" fab, inaugurated in April 1997 by Romano Prodi, president of the Italian council (the company's third 8" fab after Crolles-1 and Phoenix).
• a 12" fab under construction.

The site also hosts several R&D centers and divisions, especially for flash memory technologies.

[edit] Grenoble, France

Grenoble is one of the company's most important R&D centres, employing around 6,000 staff:

• Grenoble Polygone employs 2200 staff and is one of the historical bases of the company (ex THOMSON). All the historical wafer fab lines are now closed but the site hosts the headquarters of many divisions (marketing, design, industrialization) and an important R&D center, focused on silicon and software design and fab process development.
• Grenoble Crolles hosts an 8-inch and a 12-inch fab. The site was built as part of a 1990 Grenoble 92 partnership between SGS-Thomson and CNET (The R&D center of the French telecom company France Telecom also known as Orange) to build a common R&D center for submicron technologies.

SGS-Thomson and Philips 1991 partnership to develop new manufacturing technologies led to the construction of the company's first 8" fab, Crolles 1, which was inaugurated on 9 September 1993 by Gérard Longuet, French minister for industry. The Crolles 2 Alliance' between STMicroelectronics, TSMC, NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips semiconductor) and Freescale (formerly Motorola semiconductor) was a 2002 partnership which led to the construction of another common R&D center in Crolles which focuses on developing new nanometric technology processes for 90nm to 32nm scale technology using 12" wafers. Global semiconductor foundry TSMC of Taiwan, will use the new technologies to launch production facilities in Taiwan. The 12" fab was inaugurated by French president Jacques Chirac, on 27 February 2003.

[edit] Rousset, France

Employing around 3,000 staff, Rousset was created in 1979 with the building of a 4" fab by Eurotechnique, a joint venture between French company Saint Gobain and the National Semiconductor of the US. Rousset was sold to Thomson-CSF in 1982 following the French government's 1981-82 nationalization of several industries. At this time, the old Thomson plant located in the center of the city of Aix-en-Provence (initially created in the 1960s) was closed and people were transferred to the new Rousset site. In 1988, a few number of people of the Thomson Rousset plant (including the director, Marc Lassus) founded a start-up company, formerly known as Gemplus, now named Gemalto, and a leader in the smartcard industry. The company started with the important business of the first French telecom chip cards. The historical 4" fab has been successively converted into a 5" and later into a 6" fab (completed in 1996)and is now in the process of being shut down. Rousset also hosts ST the company's fourth 8" fab (after Crolles-1, Phoenix and Catania) which was inaugurated on 15 May 2000 by French prime minister Lionel Jospin. The site hosts several division headquarters including smartcards, microcontrollers, serial flash and EEPROM, and several R&D centers.

[edit] Ang Mo Kio, Singapore

6000 staff.
In 1970, SGS created its first assembly back-end plant in Singapore, in the area of Toa Payoh. Then in 1981, SGS decided to build a wafer fab in Singapore. The Singapore technical engineers have been trained in Italy and the fab of Ang Mo Kio started to produce its first wafers in 1984. Converted up to 8" fab, this is now an important 8" wafer fab of the group. Ang Mo Kio also hosts some design centers.

[edit] Greater Noida, India

1500+100 staff.
The site of Noida is born in 1992 with some software engineering activities. Then, a silicon design center has been inaugurated on 14 February of 1995. With 120 employees, it was the larger design center of the company outside Europe. In 2006, the site counts around 1500 employees and has been transferred some kilometers further at Greater Noida. There is a plan to increase the head-count by 1700 at the Noida centre in 2007^{[citation needed]}. The site hosts mainly design teams.
The site of Bangalore is much more recent and totals around 100 employees.

[edit] Phoenix, Arizona

SGS first presence in the US was a sale office based in Phoenix in the early 1980s. Later, under SGS-Thomson, an 8" fab was completed in Phoenix in 1995. The company's second 8" fab after Crolles 1, the site was first dedicated to producing microprocessors for Cyrix. The 8" fab is now used to manufacture machines for the company.

[edit] Tours, France

1500 staff.
This site hosts a fab and R&D centers.

[edit] Carrollton, Texas

The Carrollton site was built in 1969 by Mostek, an American company founded by former employees of Texas Instruments). Mostek was acquired by United Technologies which was in turn purchased by Thomson Semiconducteurs in 1985. Initially equipped with a 4" fab, it was converted into a 6" fab in 1988. The Colorado Springs activities of British company INMOS were transferred to Carrolton in 1989 following its acquisition SGS Thomson. Since then the site has been refocused to wafer testing.

[edit] Other sites

• Malta

In 1981, SGS-Thomson (now STMicroelectronics) built its first assembly plant in Malta. STMicroelectronics is, as of 2007, a major employer on the island.

• Muar, Malaysia: around 1000 employees

This site has been created in 1974 by Thomson. It is now of an important assembly plant.

• Casablanca, Morocco

It consists of two assembly parts (Bouskoura and Aïn Sebaâ) and totals around 4000 employees. It has been created in the sixties by Thomson. ST in Morocco is the first contributor to the exportations of the country.

• Rabat, Morocco

This site consists of a design center and counts 160 people.

• Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, near Hong Kong

The 27th of October 1994, ST and Shenzhen Electronics Group signed a partnership for the construction and the exploitation of a common assembly plant (ST has majority with 60%). The plant is located in Futian Free Trade Zone and has been operational in 1996. A new assembly plant is planned in Longgang for 2008. The R&D, design, sales and marketing office is located in the Hi-tech industrial park in Nanshan district

• Bristol, UK: approx. 200 employees

This R&D site was built for the British company Inmos Ltd. which in 1978 began development of the famous Transputer microprocessor. The site was acquired along with the purchase of Inmos in 1994, and is now primarily involved with the design of home video products (Set-Top Box, DVD), GPS and Wireless LAN chips, and accompanying software.

• Naples, Italy

Design Center counting 300 people.

• Geneva, Switzerland

This is the headquarter which hosts most of the ST top management. It totals some hundred of employees.

• Saint-Genis, France, near Geneva: A few hundred of employees.

Headquarter for logistics.

• Paris, Montrouge

Marketing and Support.

• Lecce, Italy

HW & SW Design Center which hosts 20 researcher belonging to Advanced System Technology group. Main competences are: - Wireless Sensor Networks, ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 - Wireless MAC and Wireless Multimedia protocols - MEMS & Bio-Nanotechnology

• San Jose, California, (Silicon Valley), USA)

120 staff
Marketing, , Design & Application Center.

• Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Design Center.

• Prague, Czech Republic: 100 to 200 employees

Application, Design & Support.

• Tunis, Tunisia: 300 employees

Support, Application, Design and Support.

• Sophia Antipolis, near Nice, France: a few hundred of employees

Design Center.

• Edinburgh, UK

Design Center.

• Shanghai, China
• Beijing, China

Sales Office.

• Grasbrunn, Germany

Design & Application Center.

• Istanbul, Turkey

Sales Office, Design & Application Center.

• La Jolla, CA, U.S.

Sales Office.

• Lexington, MA, U.S.

Sales Office.

• Marlow, UK

Sales Office.

• Tokyo, Japan
• Osaka, Japan
• Nagoya, Japan

Marketing and Support.

• Ottawa, Canada

In 1993, SGS-Thomson purchased the semiconductor activities of Nortel which owned in Ottawa an R&D center and a fab. The fab was closed in 2000, but the R&D centre, back-end support and the sales are still operating at the site.

• Palermo, Sicily, Italy

Design Center.

• Reading, UK
• Schaumburg, Illinois, U.S.
• Wilsonville, U.S.
• Zaventem, Belgium
• Bangalore, India

Design Centre.

[edit] Closed sites

• Rennes, France hosted a 6" fab and was closed in 2004
• Rancho Bernardo, California, a 4" fab created by Nortel and purchased by SGS-Thomson in 1994, after which it was converted into 6" fab in 1996.

[edit] Future locations

• ST and the South Korean company Hynix have created a joint-venture ST/Hynix (ST owns 33%) for the construction of a wafer fab dedicated for nand flash memories. It should be operational end of 2006.
• ST is negotiating with the Chinese foundry company 'Hua Hong NEC Electronics Co. Ltd.' (located in Shanghai) to build a 12" fab in China. This Chinese company is already the result of a partnership with the Japanese company NEC.

[edit] See also

• Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC)

[edit] External links

• Corporate website