GlobalFoundries 2010 Overview – Doubling Capacity and 28nm Ramping

Doubling Wafer Capacity by 2014

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.

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 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!

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!

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!