Semiconductor industry

In 1958 Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild independently invented the Integrated Circuit, a method of producing multiple transistors on a single "chip" of Semiconductor material.

This kicked off a number of rapid advances in fabrication technology leading to the exponential growth in semiconductor device production, known as Moore's law that has persisted over the past six or so decades.

[14] The global semiconductor industry is dominated by companies from the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands, with Israel and Germany having significant presence in the field.

While the current 20-year annual average growth of the semiconductor industry is on the order of 13%, this has been accompanied by equally above-average market volatility, which can lead to significant if not dramatic cyclical swings.

This has required the need for high degrees of flexibility and innovation in order to constantly adjust to the rapid pace of change in the market as many products embedding semiconductor devices often have a very short life cycle.

In many cases, this included inventing new processes, refining and purifying source chemicals and silicon wafers, and even manufacturing equipment, like furnaces, lithography tools and etchers.

Over time, many of these functions were outsourced, such that today semiconductor manufacturers rely on a complex supply chain to provide wafers, high purity source chemicals, and processing equipment.