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Countries where ICs were manufactured

The other day I was looking over a collection of 74LS series logic ICs I picked up inexpensively a while back. Most of these chips have date codes from the late 70s and early 80s, and I was struck by the wide variety of manufacturing locations marked on the chips. Among the usual suspects such as Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia there were some more offbeat locations not usually associated with semiconductor manufacture such as El Salvador, Honduras, and Italy. It seems a lot of the TI chips in this collection from that era were manufactured in El Salvador.

This period in history was a little before my time, so I'm curious to know about the origins of these chips. I assume the semiconductor fabs in some of the latter-mentioned countries was a short-lived thing early on in the "race to the bottom" of manufacturing costs, before China was a viable option? Is there any significant semiconductor manufacturing going on in Central America or Italy today?

Reply to
Bitrex
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I believe that the actual dice were often manufactured in the US or Japan, and sent out in bulk to be bonded out and packaged.

But I won't swear to that.

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Reply to
Tim Wescott

That's certainly true of chips higher up the food chain but who knows where the 74xxx jellybeans are/were made.

Reply to
krw

I agree with that. The actual die were made in high tec locations, then shipped to those countries for packaging.

Reply to
TTman

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For a while in the 70's/80's there were financial/tax advantages to US companies importing from certain favored countries in Central America. I have never understood how economics and tax law and politics could become so entangled. So fabbed wafers got sent, cut and packaged there, and sent back.

I forget how they acquired it (Texas Instruments? Toshiba?) but Micron has research staff and a fab in Italy I know.

Tim.

Reply to
Tim Shoppa

"Bitrex" kirjoitti viestissä:h_OdnXZJkt2tU3jRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com...

In Italy there is at least STMicroelectronics wafer fab and Vishay (IR) power semiconductor fab

Reply to
E

That was very common, at least in the '60's and '70's. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

I spent many years working in the semiconductor industry and the bulk of our products were packaged in various asian countries. The info printed on the package shows where and when the package was completed. It says nothing about where or when the wafers were produced. The same part number with different datecodes could have been make with wafers produced in different fabs using different processes, in different countries and years apart. Art

Reply to
Artemus

Thanks for your replies, everyone!

Reply to
Bitrex

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