GlobalFoundries Announces Manufacturing Capacity Expansion

With an eye on long-term growth, semiconductor foundry GlobalFoundries announced expansions of its manufacturing campus locations in Germany and New York, along with an advanced technology cluster in Abu Dhabi.

Semiconductor foundry GlobalFoundries announced plans to expand its global semiconductor manufacturing operations with a series of projects across its operations, designed to support expected increases in both near-term and long-term customer demand. One of the two major initiatives includes the construction of an additional wafer manufacturing facility at the Fab 1 campus in Dresden, Germany, designed to add additional 45/40/28nm capacity and increase overall output to 80,000 wafers per month once fully ramped up.

The second major component is an expansion of the clean room shell currently under construction at the Fab 8 campus in New York, which is designed to provide the option to increase capacity at 28/22/20nm and bring overall site output up to 60,000 wafers per month once fully equipped. In addition to the capacity expansion projects at Fab 1 and Fab 8, the company's majority shareholder, the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), announced initial plans for the creation of an advanced technology cluster in Abu Dhabi.

"Our 300mm fabs have been consistently ranked among the most advanced and efficient in the industry," said Chia Song Hwee, chief operating officer of GlobalFoundries. "Now we are taking our heritage of lean foundry manufacturing and world-class fab performance and making it available on a broader scale to meet the demands of the world's leading chip design companies. With this aggressive capacity build-out plan, we are well positioned to provide new and existing customers with the fastest option to get advanced products to market in the volumes they need to ensure success."

At the company's Dresden manufacturing campus, Fab 1, the expansion focus will be on adding capacity to support additional growth opportunities for 45/40/28nm technologies as well as initial 22nm development. This expansion will see a facility constructed at Fab 1 that will add nearly 110,000 square feet of clean room space to enable the site to scale output up to 80,000 wafers per month over the next two years.

The largest wafer fab in Europe, Fab 1's leading-edge wafer fabrication equipment will cover an area equivalent to approximately eight soccer fields. The first output from this new expansion is expected in 2011 with construction work planned to start immediately. However, the company noted the start of this expansion project at Fab 1 is still subject to the approval of a state aid package by the German authorities and the European Commission.

The New York Fab 8 expansion will increase the size of the cleanroom shell by approximately 90,000 square feet, bringing the total available cleanroom space to approximately 300,000 square feet, equivalent to roughly six soccer fields of wafer fabrication equipment. The company said work on the shell expansion is expected to begin later this month pending final approval of an investment agreement with Empire State Development Corporation and the State of New York.

In addition to new expansion initiatives in Dresden and New York, GlobalFoundries said it is also continuing with its previously announced expansion at the Fab 7 campus in Singapore to reach an output level of 50,000 wafers per month, an increase of nearly 50 percent from current levels. During the expansion, Fab 7 will continue to focus on manufacturing technologies ranging from the 65nm to 40nm technology nodes.