About Tower Semiconductor

Tower Semiconductor Ltd. operates as a pure-play independent specialty foundry that engages in the manufacture of semiconductors. The company manufactures semiconductors for its customers primarily based on third party designs. The company offers the process manufacture geometries of 0.35, 0.50, 0.55, 0.60, 0.80-micron and above on 150-mm wafers and 0.35, 0.18. 0.16 and 0.13 -micron on 200-mm wafers and 65 nanometer on 300-mm wafers. The company also provides design support and complementary technical services. ICs manufactured by it are incorporated into a wide range of products in diverse markets, including consumer electronics, personal computers, communications, automotive, industrial, aerospace and medical device products. The company focuses on establishing leading market share in high-growth specialized markets by providing its customers with high-value wafer foundry services. The company manufactures standard analog complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology, which is a widely used method of producing ICs, and it specializes in specific technologies, including CMOS image sensors, non-imaging sensors, including sensors on Gallium Nitride, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), wireless antenna switch Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI), mixed-signal, radio frequency CMOS (RFCMOS), bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS), and silicon-germanium BiCMOS (SiGe BiCMOS or SiGe), silicon photonics, high voltage CMOS, radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies and power management. To better serve its customers, the company has developed and is continuously expanding its technology offerings in these fields. Through its experience and expertise gained during more than twenty-five years of operation, the company differentiates itself by creating a high level of value for its customers through innovative technological processes, design and engineering support, competitive manufacturing indices, and dedicated customer service. The company is integrated advanced single Poly NVM into the Fab 1 process flows and developed a GaN technological platform (GaN on Si) suitable for fabrication of HEMT transistors, and gas and UV sensors. In 2003, the company commenced production in Fab 2, a wafer fabrication facility it established in Migdal Haemek, Israel. Fab 2 supports geometries ranging from 0.35 to 0.13-micron, using advanced CMOS technology, including CMOS image sensors, embedded flash, advanced analog, RF (radio frequency), and specifically RF switches on SOI, power platforms and mixed-signal technologies. The company owns Tower Partners Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (TPSCo) that manufactures products for Panasonic and other third party customers, using three semiconductor factories located in Hokuriku Japan (Uozu E, Tonami CD and Arai E), which factories were established by Panasonic. TPSCo focuses on 65nm and 180nm geometries for the manufacture of RF, power management and CMOS image senor products/applications. Manufacturing Processes and Specialized Technologies The company manufactures ICs on silicon wafers, generally using the customer’s proprietary circuit designs. In some cases, the company provides its customers with its own proprietary or third-party design elements. The end product of the company’s manufacturing process is a silicon wafer containing multiple identical ICs. In most cases, the company’s customer assumes responsibility for dicing, assembly, packaging and testing. The company provides wafer fabrication services to fabless IC companies and IDMs, as sole source or second source, and enable smooth integration of the semiconductor design and manufacturing processes. By doing so, the company enables its customers to bring high-performance, highly integrated ICs to market rapidly. The company manufactures using specialty process technologies, mostly based on CMOS process platforms with added features to enable special and unique functionality, decreased footprint of products, competitive performance and cost advantages for analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. Products made with the company’s specialty process technologies are typically more complex to manufacture than products made using standard process technologies employing similar technology nodes. The specialty process design infrastructure is complex and includes design kits and device models that are specific to the foundry in which the process is implemented and to the process technology itself. In addition, the relatively small engineering community with specialty process expertise and the significant investment required for development or transfer and maintenance of specialty process technologies has limited the number of foundries capable of offering specialty process technologies. The company also offers process transfer services to IDMs that wish to manufacture products using their own process and do not have sufficient capacity in their own fabs. The company’s process transfer services are also used by fabless companies that have proprietary process flows that they wish to manufacture at additional manufacturing sites for purposes of geographic diversity or for the manufacture of an advanced technology node that is very costly to build themselves. The company’s process transfer services include development, transfer, and extensive optimization as defined by customer needs. With its world-class engineering team, well established transfer methodologies and vast manufacturing experience, the company offers state of the art production lines for core bulk CMOS and specialized technologies, such as RF SOI, integrated into back-end-of-line (BEOL) TMR/MTJ (magnetic tunnel junction) sensors, silicon photonics, SiGe and MEMS, among others. The company is a trusted, customer-oriented service provider that has built a solid reputation in the foundry industry over more than twenty-nine years. The company has built strong relationships with customers. The company continuously targets to expand its manufacturing footprint and business by attracting new customers that will utilize its existing manufacturing facilities, some of which have recently implemented further capacity expansion projects, as well as by acquiring external capacity through acquisitions of existing or newly established fabs. The company also offers from time to time a wide range of support services for the establishment of new semiconductor fabrication facilities or the ramp up of existing facilities owned by third parties, using its technological, operational and integration expertise, for which it receives payments based on the achievement of pre-defined milestones and may also be entitled to certain capacity allocation and other rights. The company derived a significant amount of its revenues for the year ended December 31, 2022, from its target specialized markets: RF CMOS, including SiGe power IC and discrete devices, CMOS image sensors, non-imaging sensors, wireless communication and high-performance analog. The specific process technologies that the company focuses on include radio frequency CMOS (RF CMOS), including SiGe CMOS image sensors (CIS) and non-imaging sensors on high resistance silicon, advanced analog CMOS, radio frequency identification (RFID), bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS), silicon germanium (SiGe BiCMOS), high voltage CMOS, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platforms for power management, RF and sensor applications, LDMOS transistors, MEMS and wafer bonding technologies, as well as technologies for enabling AI, in particular original Y-Flash memristors. CMOS Image Sensors CMOS image sensors are ICs used to capture an image in a wide variety of consumer, communications, medical, automotive and industrial market applications, including camera-equipped cell phones, digital still, video, security and surveillance cameras, and video game consoles. The company’s dedicated manufacturing and testing processes assure consistently high electro-optical performance of the integrated sensor through wafer-level characterization. The company’s CMOS image sensor processes have demonstrated superior optical characteristics, excellent spectral response and high resolution and sensitivity. The company is actively involved in the high-end sensor and applications specific markets, which include applications, such as high end video, high end photography, industrial machine vision, dental x-ray, medical x-ray, automotive sensors, security sensors and time of flight (ToF) three dimensional sensors for entertainment, commercial and industrial applications, as well as image sensors with record frame rates for registration of ultra-fast processes. The company gained the market potential using CMOS process technology for a digital camera-on-a-chip, which integrates a CMOS image sensor, filters and digital circuitry. Upon entering the CMOS image sensor foundry business, it utilized research and development work. The company’s services include a broad range of turnkey solutions and services, including silicon proven pixels portfolio, optical characterization of a CMOS process, an innovative patented stitching manufacturing technology for large sensors, up to a one die per 300mm wafer and prototype packaging. The CMOS image sensors that the company manufactures include 180nm on 200mm wafers and 65nm on 300mm wafers with pixel sizes down to 1.12 micron utilizing dual light pipe technology, delivering outstanding image quality for a broad spectrum of digital imaging applications. Specifically, the company’s CIS portfolio includes pixels ranging from 1.12 micron up to 150 microns, all developed by it. The company provides both rolling shutter and global shutter pixels. The latter are used mainly in the industrial sensor and in the three-dimensional sensor markets. The company’s advanced technology used in CMOS image sensors enables improved optical and electrical performance, such as low dark current, low noise, high well capacity, high quantum efficiency and high uniformity of pixels utilizing deep sub-micron process technologies, enabling the manufacturing of very sophisticated and high performance camera module solutions. The company’s state-of-the-art pixels are used in a variety of new markets, such as the high-end machine vision cameras and the rapidly growing ToF 3D sensor market. In addition, the company’s advanced global shutter technology and global shutter pixels, as small as 2.5um, enable excellent performance, especially, very high shutter efficiency. For the X-ray market, the company offers its innovative patented stitching technology on 0.18-micron process, as well as on 65nm technology on 300mm wafers and a variety of 15 to 150-micron pixels that are optimized for X-ray applications. These pixels are used by its customers in dental (intra and extraoral) and other medical X-ray products (such as C-Arm surgery machines, angiography and mammography), as well as in the industrial NDT (Not Destructive Testing) X-Ray market. The company’s stitching technology, a cornerstone of its X-Ray sensors technology, enables semiconductor exposure tools to manufacture single ultra-high-resolution CMOS image sensors containing millions of pixels at sensor sizes far larger than the photo exposure tool (scanner) field size. This technology is used by the company in the manufacturing of large X-Ray sensors (up to one die per wafer) on 8 inches and 12 inches wafers, as well as high-end large format photography and industrial sensors with special pixels that the company has developed specifically for this market. In addition, this technology is being used by it in display backplanes, for large virtual reality (VR) displays. The company offers both BSI and stacking technologies in 200mm (in cooperation with a third-party that manufactures the BSI part of the process on its wafers, using its own developed BSI technology) and in 300mm in its own facilities at TPSCo. The company continues to develop this technology with additional deep trenches (DTI) between pixels, as well as a unique layer to enhance near infrared response. The company specially developed its near Infra-Red imaging technology for gesture recognition systems and a series of spectrally sensitive image sensors, including proximity sensors and sensors sensitive in the UV range. The company also announced its iToF (indirect time of flight) technology with outstanding performance parameters for fast autofocus and face recognition functions in mobile devices, which started production in 2021. In addition, the company developed SPAD (single photon avalanche diodes) technology for dToF (direct time of flight) LIDAR (light detection and range) applications in mobile devices, smart automotive advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) vehicles. The company also further developed its stacked technology to support the stacking of a very advanced technology node CMOS wafer with a state of the art SPAD imager, with pixel level electrical connections between the wafers. MEMS and Displays In the MEMS area, the company manufactures a MEMS microphone device for ear buds and other command operated devices. Speech recognition AI is being used in such devices. For high-fidelity speech recognition, differentiated performance of high-dynamic range and low-noise microphones are needed. The company also manufactures MEMS switches technology for fast RF antenna switching and accelerometers for a variety of applications. The company is working on the silicon part of GaN nano wire based LEDs, both pre and post GaN growth. In addition, the company uses its patented stitched technology for the development of CMOS back planes for large die micro-OLED arrays (monolithic approach) and LCOS displays for the virtual reality market. RF CMOS The company uses its mixed signal expertise to leverage and develop processes and provide services for customers that utilize CMOS technologies and require high frequency performance. The company’s RF CMOS process technologies have more features than advanced analog CMOS process technologies of its competitors and is well suited for wireless electronics. In addition to the smart process features, the company’s RF offering includes design kits with RF models, device simulation and physical layouts tailored specifically for RF performance. The company has RF CMOS process technologies in 0.25 micron, 0.18 micron, 0.13 micron and 65 nanometer. Further, the company has RFCMOS process built on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates (RFSOI). These RFSOI process technologies include devices optimized to deliver higher performance and improved isolation relative to devices in its RFCMOS process. The company has RFSOI process technologies in 0.18 micron, 0.13 micron and 65 nanometer lithography nodes and fabricate various devices, including antenna switches with record FOM (figure of merit) and front end modules. BiCMOS for RF and High Performance Analog The company’s BiCMOS process technologies have more features than RF CMOS process technologies and are well suited for higher performance applications, such as satellite and global positioning system (GPS) receivers and optical transceivers. These process technologies generally incorporate high-speed bipolar transistors into an RF CMOS process. The equipment requirements for BiCMOS manufacturing are specialized and assume enhanced tool capabilities to achieve high yield manufacturing. The company’s SiGe BiCMOS process technologies has more features than BiCMOS processes and is well suited for more advanced RF and high performance analog semiconductors, such as high-speed, low noise, front-end wireless components, optical networking components, automotive radar components, hard-disk drive pre-amplifiers, power amplifiers and low-noise amplifiers. These integrated circuits generally incorporate silicon germanium bipolar transistors, which are formed by the deposition of a thin layer of silicon germanium within a bipolar transistor, to achieve higher speed, lower noise, and more efficient power performance than the BiCMOS process technology. It is also possible to achieve higher speed using SiGe BiCMOS process technologies equivalent to those demonstrated in standard RF CMOS processes that are two process generations smaller in line width. For example, a 0.18 micron SiGe BiCMOS process is able to achieve speeds comparable to a 90 nanometer RF CMOS process. The company developed enhanced tool capabilities in cooperation with large semiconductor tool suppliers to achieve high yield SiGe manufacturing. This equipment and related process expertise makes the company one of the few integrated circuit manufacturers with demonstrated ability to deliver SiGe BiCMOS products. The company has 0.35 micron, 0.18 micron and 0.13 SiGe BiCMOS technologies available. Silicon Photonics (SiPho) The company’s industry-leading silicon photonics platform targets optical networking and data center interconnect applications. The SiPho process complements the company’s SiGe BiCMOS processes by providing a companion solution able to integrate optical components in the expanding data communication market. Power and Power Management ICs The company’s power technologies are generally divided into a low-voltage BCD offering and a high-voltage offering, including 140V Resurf, 200V SOI and 700V ultra-high voltage technologies. The company’s low-voltage BCD process technologies have more features than advanced analog CMOS processes and are well suited for power and driver semiconductors, such as voltage regulators, battery chargers, power management products and audio amplifiers. These process technologies generally incorporate higher voltage CMOS devices than advanced analog CMOS processes such as 5V, 8V, 12V, 40V and 60V devices, and, in the case of BCD, bipolar devices integrated into an advanced analog CMOS process. The company has BCD offerings in 0.5 micron, 0.35 micron, 0.25 micron, 0.18 micron and 65 nanometer. The company’s higher voltage technologies, which include 140V Resurf, 200V SOI and 700V ultra-high voltage platform, support applications, such as gate drivers for discrete high-power transistors and automotive, industrial, AC adaptor and lighting markets. In addition, the company has developed a unique NVM solution (Y-Flash) specifically for power and power management applications in its 0.18 micron platforms. The company has developed a series of Y-flash based modules of up to 16kbit, which have been integrated in various power management products of its customers. The company has also introduced high density single Poly silicon memory arrays of other intellectual property vendors into its CMOS process flows. Examples of technologies under development include GaN technologies for sensor applications and technologies aimed at integrating micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) devices with CMOS, using phase-change materials for more advanced RF switches, scaling the features the company offers today to the 65 nanometer process, including the integration of advanced SiGe transistors with 65 nanometer CMOS, and copper metallization. Customers, Marketing and Sales The company’s marketing and sales strategy seeks to further solidify its position as the leading foundry of high value analog semiconductor solutions, by increasing its market share at existing customers and expanding its global customer base. The company has marketing, sales, design support engineers, field application engineers and customer support personnel located in many countries worldwide, who have been hired and assigned to these roles based on their industry experience, customer relationships and understanding of the semiconductor marketplace. The company’s sales cycle is generally 9 to 24 months or longer for new customers and can be as short as 6 to 12 months for existing customers. The primary customers of the company’s foundry and design services are fabless semiconductor companies and IDMs. The company’s customers include many analog and mixed-signal industry leaders, serving a variety of end market segments. A portion of the company’s product sales are made pursuant to long-term contracts with its customers, under which it agrees to reserve manufacturing capacity for certain purchasing commitments. To promote its products, technology offering and services, the company publishes press releases, articles, technology journals and white papers. In addition, the company presents and participates in panel sessions at industry conferences, hold a variety of regional and international technology seminars, and exhibit at various industry trade shows. The company discusses advances in its process technology portfolio and progresses on specific relevant programs with its prospective and existing customers, as well as industry analysts and research analysts, on a regular basis. The company’s customers use its processes to design and market a broad range of analog and mixed-signal semiconductors for diverse end markets, including wired and wireless high-speed communications, consumer electronics, automotive, medical, security and industrial applications. The company manufactures products for a wide range of electronic systems, including but not limited to, high-performance applications, such as antenna switches, transceivers and power management circuits for cellular phones; transceivers and power amplifiers for wireless local area networking products; power management, audio amplifiers and driver integrated circuits for consumer electronics; tuners for digital televisions and set-top boxes; modem chipsets for broadband access devices and gaming devices; serializer/deserializers, or SerDes, for fiber optic transceivers; high end video cameras, dental and medical x-ray vision, industrial cameras, focal plane arrays for imaging applications; infra-red detectors for gesture recognition, controllers for power amplifier and switching chips in cellular phones and wireline interfaces for switches and routers, magnetic field and gas and UV sensors. Competition The company competes most directly in the specialty segment with foundries such as GlobalFoundries (mainly in the RF business), Vanguard Semiconductor, DongBu, X-Fab and Hua Hong Semiconductor. The company also competes in some areas with the pure-play advanced technology node-driven foundry service providers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC). Research and Development The company’s research and development expenses for the year ended December 31, 2022, included $83.9 million. Proprietary Rights As of December 31, 2022, the company held 287 patents in force. The company has entered into various patent and other technology license agreements with technology companies, including Synopsys, ARM, Cadence, Mentor Graphics and others, under which it has obtained rights to additional technologies and intellectual property. Trademarks TPSCO and TPSCo (and design) are registered trademarks of the company in the U.S. and Japan. Design Services To better serve its customers’ design needs using advanced CMOS and mixed-signal processes, the company has entered into a series of agreements with leading providers of physical design libraries, mixed-signal and non-volatile memory design components. The company interacts closely with customers throughout the design development and prototyping process to assist them in the development of high performance and low power consumption semiconductor designs and to lower their final die, or individual semiconductor, costs through die size reductions and integration. The company provides engineering support and services, as well as manufacturing support in an effort to accelerate its customers’ design and qualification process so that its customers can achieve faster time to market. The company has entered into alliances with Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Synopsys, Inc., Mentor Graphics Corp., and other suppliers of electronic design automation tools, and also licensed standard cells, I\O and memory technologies from ARM, Synopsys, Inc., and other leading providers of physical intellectual property components for the design and manufacture of ICs. Jazz Semiconductor Trusted Foundry For purposes of the company’s the U.S. aerospace and defense business, Tower and Tower NPB have worked with the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency of the United States Department of Defense (DCSA) to mitigate concern of foreign ownership, control or influence over the operations in Fab 3. The protection and prevention of potential unauthorized access of trusted and classified materials and information was addressed by creating Jazz Semiconductor Trusted Foundry (JSTF) as a subsidiary of Newport Fab LLC, which is directly held by NPB Co., and limiting possession of all trusted and classified information solely to JSTF. Environmental, Safety and Quality Matters And Certifications All the company’s facilities are ISO 9001 certified, an international quality standard that provides guidance to achieve an effective quality management system. In addition, all the company’s facilities are IATF16949 certified, a stringent automotive quality standard. For safety, all of the company’s facilities are OHSAS 45001 certified, an international occupational health and safety standard that provides guidance on how to achieve an effective health and safety management system. History Tower Semiconductor Ltd. was founded in 1993. The company was incorporated under the laws of the state of Israel in 1993.