As part of its own Technology Summit 2021, the contract manufacturer Globalfoundries will be informing about innovations in the company. A deeper cooperation with Qualcomm for 5G products and a new silicon photonics platform is announced. The successes with the 22FDX process and large investments are further topics.
Qualcomm as a closer partner
The existing cooperation with the smartphone chip developer Qualcomm is to be expanded. For this customer, Globalfoundries is to manufacture “5G RF front-end products” on a larger scale, i.e. high-frequency circuits for 5G products in the broadest sense, which in turn can be expected in Qualcomm's SOCs or modem chips.
The version of the 22FDX process from Globalfoundries, which is optimized for RF products and runs under 22FDX +, is ideal for this.
22FDX collects more design Wins
From Globalfoundries' point of view, the 22FDX platform still has the best RF features. Together, 22FDX and 22FDX + are said to have combined design wins for potential sales of 7.5 billion US dollars. Almost a year ago the contract manufacturer had spoken of orders worth 4.5 billion US dollars for the process.
Fab 1 ready for automotive
Globalfoundries not only wants to serve the mobile and IoT sectors, but also the recently extremely rapidly growing automotive sector with semiconductor products for automobiles with the 22FDX process. In this context, it is now being announced that the 22FDX line in Fab 1 in Dresden has qualified as “Auto Grade 1 Ready”.
$ 6 billion investment
In order to be attractive to customers in view of the growing global demand for semiconductor products, Globalfoundries has to increase its own production capacities. Investments totaling 6 billion US dollars are to be made for this purpose. The sum includes the expansion of the facilities in Singapore, which was announced in July and will cost nearly 4 billion, as well as investments in Dresden and the USA.
Even if the Investments will extend over years, these appear ambitious in view of an annual turnover of around 6 billion US dollars for Globalfoundries in 2020.
New silicon photonics platform
Another announcement is the new 45 nm platform for the production of silicon photonics. Silicon photonics is the emerging technology for data transmission between computer chips With the help of light, understood what happens faster than with electronic solutions. In this case, the silicon serves as an optical conductor.
According to Globalfoundries, the new platform will for the first time offer a Micro Ring Resonator (MRR) as an optical component for 300 mm wafer technology.
Probably in the first quarter of 2022 the new technology will be qualified for use.
Of course, TSMC, the largest foundry in the world, has Silicon Photonics on its screen.
12FDX still not in sight
Even if 12FDX with significantly smaller structures has been an issue for years, it still exists today no date for the availability of the procedure. The new manufacturing process should only come when the time is right and right for it. Globalfoundries sees no reason for a quick change due to the success with 22FDX.
ComputerBase has received information about this article from Globalfoundries under NDA. The only requirement was the earliest possible publication time.