Glossary comparison
Fab vs Foundry: what is the difference?
The difference
A foundry is a business that makes chips for other companies; a fab is the building where wafers are processed. Foundries run fabs, but so do companies that make only their own chips, such as many memory makers.
A foundry is a business model; a fab is the plant. People say "the foundry" when they mean the company and "the fab" when they mean the building and its line.
The two terms
Fab
The cleanroom facility where wafers are processed, together with its subfab utilities, chemical distribution and automation. A leading-edge logic fab now costs well over twenty billion dollars and is depreciated over roughly five to seven years.
Foundry
A company that manufactures integrated circuits designed by others, supplying the process, PDK and IP ecosystem that design tools target. From an EDA standpoint the foundry defines the rule decks, models and tool versions a design must sign off against.
Side by side
| Field | Fab | Foundry |
|---|---|---|
| Stands for | Fabrication plant | Not an abbreviation |
| Type | Term | Business |
| Domain | General Industry | EDA Tools & Flows |
| Group | Value chain and business models | EDA industry |