Bosch makes historic investment in IoT with new wafer fab
German engineering company Bosch has placed a big bet on the future value of the IoT, with a €1 billion investment to build a wafer fabrication centre in Dresden, Germany.
Wafers are used in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips, primarily for integrated circuits. The process of manufacturing semiconductors always starts with a silicon disc – the wafer. The bigger a wafer’s diameter, the more chips that can be made from it per manufacturing cycle.
Bosch says it is investing in the wafer ‘fab’ in order to manufacture chips based on 12-inch wafers, in response to growing demand for IoT and mobility applications. In fact, a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that the global semiconductor market is set to grow by more than 5 percent annually up to 2019, with the mobility and IoT market segments growing especially strongly. Read more…
