GLOBALFOUNDRIE Fab 2 Anticipation Builds to a new high
Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 4:13 pm
SEMICON West Preview: Fab 2 Anticipation Builds to a Fevered Pitch
by Jon Carvill, California, USA | Tue, 7/14/2009
As a communications person you get used to juggling multiple balls at once – it’s the nature of the job and something that I personally enjoy. When I was thinking about the topic for my first blog entry there was no shortage of things to write about as there’s lots on the go at GLOBALFOUNDRIES these days. One subject, however, was building to a fevered pitch, our July 24th groundbreaking for Fab 2 in Saratoga County, NY. At SEMICON West this week there is significant buzz around Fab 2 and what it represents for GLOBALFOUNDRIES, for the US and for the global semiconductor industry as a whole.
Once constructed, we expect Fab 2 to be the world’s most advanced semiconductor foundry. Its construction represents more than three-years of careful planning and collaboration and an investment of roughly $4.2B. Breaking ground on a new facility is an exciting time for any foundry company but it’s a little more than that for GLOBALFOUNDRIES. It represents a significant step in realizing our company’s vision to become the world’s first truly global foundry company. It’s also a major statement about where we see the industry going and about the long-term growth prospects of our company. For New York though, this fab is about a whole lot more. It’s about bringing hope to a region in the form of jobs and economic opportunity at a time when other companies in our industry just aren’t making these kinds of investments. It’s also about showing the market that the US and Europe are viable regions for leading-edge manufacturing innovation – when the majority of the industry has migrated to Asia over the past two to three decades.
The technology in Fab 2 will be absolutely state of the art. Our current plan is to ramp it on 28nm technology in 2H 2012 and then make a quick transition to 22nm, in a similar fashion to what we did with Fab 36 for AMD in Dresden. Ramping on a mature technology generation reduces significant risk in bringing a new fab successfully online and into production. Of course Fab 2 will also come stacked with the latest generation of our patented APM software to ensure maximum automation, control and predictability in rapidly ramping production for our customers at mature yield.
People often ask us, “Why are you doing this now and do you think you’ll have the customer volume to fill this fab?” This is an industry unlike most in technology as it requires you to hedge significant and capital-intensive bets 3-5 years in advance. It’s the nature of the business and has been one of the key factors in driving consolidation over the past few years. More and more companies are moving to a fabless model and we expect that trend to continue. We’re fortunate to have the capital resources necessary to fuel our growth with a committed investor in ATIC that has a long-term horizon and is in this to win. These resources will enable us to intelligently scale capacity and sustain R&D investments to enable aggressive development to continue on 32/28/22nm and beyond for our technology.
Our customer acquisition activities also continue at a fevered pace and we have and will continue to engage with the world’s biggest fabless and fablite semiconductor companies and I am pleased to say that there’s tremendous interest in GLOBALFOUNDRIES. So much so, that we expect to be able to make some new announcements in this area imminently with the goal to have multiple foundry customers on board by the end of 2009.
It’s an exciting time for GLOBALFOUNDRIES as we bring a new model to the foundry industry and drive a further transformation in this space. Stay tuned as it’s going to be a busy second half of the year for GLOBALFOUNDRIES.
Jon Carvill is Director of Corporate Communications at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied