Legit Editorial Reviews

GlobalFoundries 2010 Overview - Doubling Capacity and 28nm Ramping

Manufacturer: GLOBALFOUNDRIES
Product: GlobalFoundries
Date: Wed, Jan 13, 2010 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Doubling Wafer Capacity by 2014


GLOBALFOUNDRIES 2010 Focus

GLOBALFOUNDRIES also showed us a roadmap and we know how much our readers love looking at these. It basically shows that GLOBALFOUNDRIES will be cranking out 32nm-SHP and 28nm-HP wafers in 2010!  This is great news as it appears the 28nm node will be the next major battle ground for CPU and GPU makers. With all the issues TSMC has had with ramping up 40nm this could be huge for GLOBALFOUNDRIES if they can get the process done quickly and with better yields.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES 2010 Focus

One of the first processors to be made on the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm process will be the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor. These will be produced via a 28-nanometer HKMG (high-k metal gate) process, but no time table was given on when this would happen Right now the Cortex-A9 is being built on TSMC's 40nm-G process. The move from 40nm down to 28nm will have more than 2x the gate density than the industry standard 40nm process, so that is why Cortex is looking forward to a die shrink like this. With companies like Cortex and STMicro now GLOBALFOUNDRIESwe can see many system-on-a-chip (SoC) companies being interested in having GLOBALFOUNDRIES produce their wafers.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES 2010 Focus

GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the foundry industry leader in time-to-volume on 40/45nm technology and expects to repeat this accomplishment with 32nm and “Gate First” High-K Metal Gate technology. The chart above shows how they hope that the move to 32nm and 28nm products will go smoothly as their time-to-volume to 45nm was much faster than other leading foundries like TSMC moving over to the 40nm process. Right now they have initial 32nm HKMG wafers being production over at Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany. Once the move to 32nm is fully ramped up the company will begin to ramp up 28nm and according to their roadmap that we showed you earlier, that will be later in 2010!

GLOBALFOUNDRIES 2010 Focus

With these plans in place, global leading-edge capacity is expected to expand to 1.6 million 300mm wafers annually by 2014. This will be supplemented by 2.2 million 200mm wafers annually, offering customers the full spectrum of foundry technology from mainstream to the leading edge, for a total of 5.8 million 200mm equivalents. Based off these numbers it appears that GLOBALFOUNDRIES will double its total manufacturing process by 2014!

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It looks like GLOBALFOUNDRIES will be busy in 2010! Now that they have the acquisitions completed and the infrastructure in place they can focus on ramping up new technologies and getting more customers and business. The move to32nm and 28nm will be interesting and it looks like GLOBALFOUNDRIES will be a front runner if all stays on track!

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