Companies that design and manufacture their own chips — memory, analog, power, and Intel.
Executive summary
Integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) both design and manufacture their own chips — the original structure of the semiconductor industry, predating the split into fabless designers and contract foundries. IDMs own fabs, control their process technology, and sell finished products under their own brand. They persist because, in their domains, product and process are inseparable. Today they fall into three families: memory (Samsung, SK hynix, Micron), analog/power/embedded (Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Infineon, ST, NXP, Microchip, Renesas), and logic (Intel, now pivoting toward a foundry model).
The defining dynamic of the current cycle is the AI-driven memory supercycle. High-bandwidth memory (HBM) has transformed DRAM from a boom-bust commodity into a constrained, premium, strategically vital product — so much so that in 2025 SK hynix overtook Samsung in both DRAM revenue and, for the first time ever, operating profit. The analog/power family, by contrast, offers steadier, less cyclical growth tied to automotive and industrial electronics, while Intel’s foundry transition is one of the industry’s biggest open questions.
1. Defining the sector and its strategic importance
An IDM performs the entire chip lifecycle in-house: design, wafer fabrication, and assembly/test. This is the opposite of the disaggregated model, in which a fabless company designs and a foundry manufactures. IDMs remain vertically integrated where manufacturing know-how is itself the competitive advantage — the recipe for a DRAM cell or a precision data converter lives in the process, not in a licensable design file.
Their strategic weight is large: IDMs own the memory that every AI accelerator needs, the analog and power chips in every car and factory, and — through Intel — a substantial share of Western leading-edge manufacturing capacity. They also carry the heaviest financial burden in the industry, funding both R&D and multi-billion-dollar fabs.
2. Position in the value chain
In the value-chain map, an IDM effectively spans the first three stages — design, fabrication, and test — within a single company, rather than handing the chip between specialist firms.
This integration is increasingly the exception rather than the rule. Leading-edge logic largely abandoned it (fabless + foundry), and even some IDMs now outsource their most advanced nodes to TSMC while keeping mature production in-house — a “fab-lite” hybrid. Memory and analog remain the strongholds of full integration.
3. The three families of IDMs
IDMs are not one business but three, with very different economics. (This corrects a framing point: there are three families, not two — memory, analog/power/embedded, and logic.)
