TSMC’s IC design affiliate Global Unichip (GUC) is looking for 15-20% growth in Q3 over Q2 on the back of communications and consumer designs on 65nm and 40nm processes, reports DigiTimes.
The company is said to have had orders for 4G baseband ICs from
Apple is said to have signed up for foundry at TSMC for 28nm and 20nm processes.
Global Unichip had $30m revenues in Q2.
GUC was founded in 1998 and was one of a group of about 15 Taiwanese design houses which then worked with TSMC. In 2003, TSMC decided that the differing aims and agenda of the various houses made it difficult to work with them all, and decided to work just with GUC. So, that year, TSMC took a 49% share in GUC which was subsequently reduced to a 36% stake.
GUC appears to be TSMC's route into offering design services without TSMC appearing compete with its IDM customers.
If a chip needs a re-spin, then a customer may get a free re-spin in certain circumstances. If the fault is caused by faulty design by the customer, then the customer pays for the re-spin, but, if it is caused by a fault in GUC-supplied IP, or a fault in the manufacturing process, then GUC or TSMC will pay for the re-spin.
