ALKHOBAR: GLOBALFOUNDRIES, a new semiconductor manufacturing company formed by a joint venture between AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), has outlined its plans to expand opportunities in the semiconductor industry. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is led by an experienced semiconductor management team, including CEO Doug Grose, formerly senior vice president of manufacturing operations at AMD, and Chairman of the Board Hector Ruiz, formerly executive chairman and chairman of the board at AMD. The company is the only US-based global semiconductor foundry and commences operations with approximately 3,000 employees worldwide, with headquarters in Silicon Valley.
"The launch of GLOBALFOUNDRIES represents a historic day for our industry, one which will permanently change the market landscape by launching the world's first truly global foundry services provider," said Grose. "With two committed joint venture partners providing strong technology and capital resources, our company brings a unique set of global capabilities to the market that will enable our customers to fully unlock their potential to innovate."
Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), a unit of Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Development Company now owns 65.8 percent of GLOBALFOUNDRIES for which it paid $2.1 billion. Mubadala also owns 16 percent of AMD. ATIC considers the investment to be long term, part of Abu Dhabi's plan to diversify away from petroleum. Waleed Ahmed Al-Mokarrab, chairman of ATIC, has been named to AMD's board. It should be noted that all the semiconductor manufacturing facilities currently owned by GLOBALFOUNDRIES were spun off from AMD.
"Despite the current economic climate, this is an industry with tremendous opportunities for long-term growth and innovation," said Al-Mokarrab. "Through its global footprint, world-class technology know-how and access to state-of-the-art research and development, we believe GLOBALFOUNDRIES is well-positioned to challenge for market leadership in this competitive industry."
GLOBALFOUNDRIES will service the manufacturing needs of AMD, currently its only customer, and will also offer an expanded road map of technologies to third-party customers through its high-volume, global foundry services. This means that for the first time, early access to volume chip production using leading-edge technologies will not be limited to high-end microprocessor makers. Consumer electronics and mobile handsets firms for example would be able to contract GLOBALFOUNDRIES to produce chips manufactured to specific architecture and design requirements.
"GLOBALFOUNDRIES introduces a new dynamic to our industry by bringing much needed choice and competition to the market for leading-edge foundry services," Ruiz said. "In Dresden, Germany, we plan to deliver on our commitment to expand our industry-leading manufacturing cluster with a second facility for bulk silicon. In New York we plan to build a state-of-the-art wafer foundry, that once complete will be the most advanced of its kind in the world, creating new jobs and solidifying the region as a cluster for semiconductor innovation."
To meet the long-term needs of the industry, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is proceeding with plans to expand its Dresden, Germany, manufacturing lines by bringing a second 300mm manufacturing facility with bulk silicon capabilities online in late 2009. The Dresden cluster will be re-named Fab 1 with Module 1 initially focused on production of high-performance 45nm Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology, and Module 2 transitioning to 32nm bulk silicon capabilities.
In addition to Fab 1 the company will also begin construction on a new state-of-the-art 32nm and smaller features, $4.2 billion manufacturing facility at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Saratoga County, NY, in 2009. The facility should be completed by July 2011, with first manufacturing in 2012. This new facility will be named Fab 2 and is expected to create approximately 1,400 new direct jobs and more than 5,000 indirect jobs in the surrounding region. Once operational, Fab 2 will be the only independently-managed, advanced semiconductor manufacturing foundry in the United States, bucking the trend of manufacturing industries leaving the US.
Despite the negative impact of the economic slowdown on the semiconductor industry, the long-term growth of the industry remains strong. Chip-makers are exiting manufacturing in the face of growing cost and complexity and instead looking to independent foundry companies for a secure outside source of production. In the semiconductor industry today, the right combination of manufacturing capacity and advanced technology is in limited supply. Traditional chip foundry companies tend to lag behind in technology, unable to make the large research and development investments required to stay on the leading-edge. Traditional foundries also tend to be located in one country or region, presenting logistical limitations for chip-makers' increasingly global operations and limiting options in the event of supply interruptions such as those resulting from natural disasters. GLOBALFOUNDRIES plans to fill these gaps, offering advanced manufacturing technologies coupled with high-volume capabilities and efficient production. The company will compete against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, United Microelectronics and Chartered Semiconductor.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES also brings an extensive pipeline of technology innovations as a result of its founders' longstanding research and development collaboration with IBM, including membership in the IBM joint development alliance for both silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and bulk silicon through the 22nm generation. The alliance consists of a group of leading semiconductor companies collaborating on next generation silicon technologies.
AMD will continue to play a critical role in GLOBALFOUNDRIES' future success as a shareholder, and also as its first and largest customer. Bruce Claflin, a director at AMD since 2003, and former CEO of 3Com has been tapped as AMD's new chairman to replace Ruiz.
"With the launch of a new global player in leading-edge manufacturing and AMD's transformation into a processing design leader, we are creating two synergistic companies poised to bring significant innovation and impact to the global technology industry," said Dirk Meyer, president and CEO of AMD. "GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the only partner with the capabilities to extend AMD's heritage of manufacturing excellence and scale capacity to benefit the whole industry. This is a game-changing event, and we are excited about the possibilities."
Alberto Bozzo, corporate VP and GM, AMD EMEA concurred.
"The new arrangement with GLOBALFOUNDRIES makes AMD financially stronger," he said. "AMD will now concentrate on design, on chipsets, graphics, CPUs and sales and marketing. These will become 100 percent of the focus of AMD moving forward. In terms of the design of processors and chips generally speaking, there are two major components. There is the architecture and design of the processors, and there is the technology of the silicon. So now the technology of the silicon will be owned by GLOBALFOUNDRIES, while the design and the architecture of the chip, as it is today, is fully the competence of AMD. We intend to enhance our competencies even further, to deliver value to a platform experience for our customers."
Bozzo was on a visit to Dubai last week, timed with the announcement of the new direction for AMD in partnership GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Bozzo is one of the newer senior executives at AMD but he is not new to the Middle East. He joined AMD from HP where he most recently served as the VP of HP's multi-billion dollar go-to-market consumer business unit in EMEA. Bozzo is currently in the process of determining the best means for AMD to enhance its operations in the Middle East.
"This region is fundamental for our growth and our growth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region is today fueled by the Middle East's positive results. AMD is totally committed to the Middle East," Bozzo remarked. "My visit this week has been very fruitful. I met with our partners, customers and Mubadala Development Company. We do have strong plans to continue to invest in this region in terms of people and in terms of focused programs. This will be both with our multi-national partners such as HP, Acer and Toshiba, and with our local channel partners who are right now giving us fantastic results and helping us to make such a strong impact on the market."
In the near future, AMD is hoping to announce programs that would make it much more engaged with the region's education sector and local institutes of higher learning. The company will also be increasing its corporate assets in the Middle East, specifically in the area of human resources.
"In my opinion talent should not be tied to race, gender or ethnicity and I have quite a diverse group of talents within my team," Bozzo said. "My recommendation is to use local people and to hire local people as we expand geographically because there are some great talents in this region. I want to have those talents with us from a cultural point of view and from an integration point of view, since hiring locally will best serve both the interests of the region and AMD."
AMD launches world’s first 40nm graphics processors
AMD has announced the world’s first graphics processors to harness 40nm process technology: the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830. These feature-rich graphics processors redefine mobile PC entertainment with advanced capabilities including support for the latest Microsoft DirectX 10.1 games, a home theater-quality HD multimedia experience, and energy-efficient features for long battery life at work, at home or at play.
“People now decidedly prefer mobile PCs, and innovations like this 40nm mobile Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) show AMD is uniquely positioned to make the best entertainment experiences of desktop PCs possible in a notebook,” said Rick Bergman, senior VP and GM, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “Depending on the performance of the panel or external monitor, laptops that feature these tiny, powerful but efficient graphics engines can run today’s most demanding game titles at beyond 1080p HD resolution, or playback full 1080p HD video with high energy efficiency thanks to ATI PowerPlay and 40nm process technology.”
Initially the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 graphics processors will be available in the Asus K notebook, planned to be on the market in Q2 2009.
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