But if I develop first with AMFitzgerald, won’t I pay a penalty when I have to later transfer my project to a foundry for volume production? It seems more efficient to develop directly at the foundry. It may seem so, but in practice, it’s ultimately faster and less expensive to start with us. Our main value as expert developers is de-risking your design and process as quickly as possible–and generating IP along the way, which you will own outright. Owning the IP will enable you to shop around and choose from among several foundries. Because of our collegial relationship with most foundries’ engineering teams, we can execute a very efficient transfer, with expert-to-expert communication. Foundries are happy to receive transfers from us because they know we've already eliminated the major process risks. As a result, they'll offer better pricing to you if they perceive lower risk for the transferred project. Beginning development with a foundry creates a number of risks for a customer. First, unless the foundry is already comfortable with your device technology, you may be charged more because of the perceived process risk of new technology. Your project may get sidetracked in favor of priority production customers, stretching out the development timeline. If you don’t have process expertise on staff, you may have trouble managing the foundry team or any debugging. Finally, if the foundry is designing for you or incorporating its own process modules, you may have to share IP ownership with the foundry.
