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Quote 14 :
Pioneering chip plant in Abu Dhabi to cost at least $ 6bn
Ben Flanagan
- Last Updated: September 15. 2010 11:58PM UAE / September 15. 2010 7:58PM GMT
The Abu Dhabi Government-owned Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) is to spend between US$6 billion and $7bn building its microchip manufacturing plant in the emirate. The move is part of the company's efforts to tap into rising demand for semiconductors. News of the multibillion-dollar price tag comes just four months after the company selected a site for the plant near Abu Dhabi International Airport, which will become the first microchip factory in the Middle East when it begins production in 2015.
"$6bn to $7bn is the estimated cost of what it will take to build a state of the art fabricating facility anywhere in the world," said a spokesman for ATIC. ATIC's planned spending on the plant comes on top of the $3.6bn the company has pledged to expand the capacity of its Globalfoundries microchip business. That investment will be divided between Globalfoundries chip-making plants in Germany and the US. "[About] $1.6bn of that will be in Dresden, the other $2bn will be in New York," the spokesman said.
In March, ATIC paid its US counterpart Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) $2.1bn for a 65.8 per cent stake in Globalfoundries. While ATIC's stake has since grown to 73 per cent since March, the spokesman said it did not intend to take 100 per cent ownership of Globalfoundaries. "Every new dollar we invest in Globalfoundries will, by evolution, reduce the percentage of what [AMD] owns in it. The intention is to continue to have a long partnership with AMD and not buy [Globalfoundries] outright. It's not our intention to buy their share completely," he said.
ATIC plans to broaden its investment focus next year. "Right now, the focus is on Globalfoundries. As you look at 2011, you will see that perspective start to broaden. You'll see complementary kinds of investments in the technology ecosystem in 2011 and beyond," the spokesman said. He said design companies, intellectual property companies and those that serve chip-makingplants were possible investment targets.
ATIC said the Abu Dhabi plant would "be part of the Globalfoundries network" but added that ATIC may provide auxiliary services for the facility. The launch of a factory will propel the UAE capital on to the world stage of technological development, the spokesman said. "It's our strong belief that Abu Dhabi will be a hub as part of the global technology network," he said, pointing to the increasing demand for high-tech products from the emerging markets in the Gulf and India.
Rising demand in the sector means the semiconductor foundry industry will be worth $26.8bn this year, said the technology research firm IC Insights. Building a talent base in the UAE will be essential to the successful operation of a chip-making plant, which would typically employ 1,000 to 1,500 employees, ATIC said. The talent gap is a "huge concern" in the launch of high-tech ventures such as the Abu Dhabi microchip plant, said Ranjit Rajan, the research director at IDC Middle East, Turkey and Africa.
"One of the biggest concerns with establishing high-tech manufacturing in general is lack of skills. In spite of all the Government has invested in education, it takes time for this to yield results," he said. Mr Rajan said there were several reasons behind ATIC's decision to build a new plant in Abu Dhabi. One factor was the geographical position of the country between the markets in the East and West. Another was the expected increase in demand for microchips. A third was that the semiconductor business was not as labour intensive as other parts of the technology manufacturing industry, where much of the production has been outsourced to cheaper labour markets.
"The UAE can't compete there, so it's looking at areas that are not labour intensive but are technology intensive," , Mr Rajan said. He said the semiconductor business suited Abu Dhabi as it "requires a lot of investment, and not everyone can do that".
Microprocessor AMD
Quote 15 :
GlobalFoundries Granted Independence, Acquires Remaining Stake from AMD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/4/2012 9:04 PM EST
Posted in CPUs , GlobalFoundries , AMD
When AMD originally spun off its foundry business in 2008, the resulting Foundry Company (as it was called back then) was 55.6% ATIC owned and 44.4% AMD owned. Since then the Foundry Company has been rebranded Global Foundries and has been on a march towards independence. Plans for additional fabs and the acquisition of Chartered Semiconductor both strengthened GF as a player in the foundry space. A closer relationship with ARM and its partners has also been a key element of GF's strategy.
AMD has been divesting itself from Global Foundries over the past few years and today announced that it has aquired the remaining shares of the company from AMD (approximately 14% of the company). Global Foundries is now completely independent of AMD, and AMD is now a regular partner/customer of GF's.
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ATIC CEO ‘Ibrahim Ajami’ presents
Semiconductors : The Silver Lining
Quote 16 :
ATIC and GLOBALFOUNDRIES announce new leadership to drive continued investment through 2012
DRESDEN, GERMANY: June 16, 2011. As part of a plan to continue significant investments in technology, talent and manufacturing capacity over the next 18 months, the board of directors of GLOBALFOUNDRIES - along with its majority shareholder, the Advanced Technology Investment Company - announced today it has appointed new leadership to run the company.
Semiconductor industry veteran Ajit Manocha has been appointed interim Chief Executive Officer of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. James A. Norling will serve as Executive Chairman and Ibrahim Ajami will serve as Vice Chairman of the GLOBALFOUNDRIES board of directors. All appointments are effective immediately.
"GLOBALFOUNDRIES is just two years old, but in that short time customers have embraced what it represents to the market," said Norling. "At the same time, customers are asking us for more capacity, faster technology delivery and greater agility. The Board intends for this new management team to meet those customer needs while improving operational performance."
"GLOBALFOUNDRIES, with the continuous support of ATIC, is in the middle of an intense, competitive ramp-up of manufacturing capacity and technology development," said Ajami, who will also remain CEO of ATIC. Under this new leadership team, investment in GLOBALFOUNDRIES will double over the next 18 months."
Through end of May 2011, ATIC had invested over $6 billion, to acquire the former manufacturing assets of Advanced Micro Devices in Dresden, Germany ($2.1 billion in March 2009) and the assets of Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing of Singapore ($3.1 billion in December 2009) as well as an estimated $1 billion to construct a new fabrication facility in upstate New York. Through the end of 2012, ATIC will invest another approximately $6 billion in manufacturing capacity in Dresden, Singapore and New York with initial construction to begin in Abu Dhabi.
Doug Grose, who has served as CEO of GLOBALFOUNDRIES since its inception, will transition to become senior advisor to GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ATIC with a focus on technology leadership and ensuring delivery of next generation technologies for competitive differentiation. Chia Song Hwee, Chief Operating Officer, will remain with the company in that position until August 2011, when he will return to be part of Singapore's business future.
"Doug Grose and Chia Song Hwee formed the foundation of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, bringing together the world's leading-edge manufacturing technology with the heritage of a full-service foundry partner," said Norling. "This new leadership team will build on that foundation, as we increase investment in technology, capacity and talent while optimizing performance."
Norling also said an executive search for a permanent CEO has already begun. Manocha's focus in the short-term is to work closely with top management and talent of the company to optimize performance, continue progress on the customer and technology roadmap, and continue the efficient ramp of capacity in Dresden and New York.
Manocha is a veteran semiconductor industry executive with more than 30 years of global expertise in operations, general management, and manufacturing. Having recently served as an advisor to ATIC, Manocha brings a wealth of talent, experience and leadership ability to GLOBALFOUNDRIES at a critical time in the company's development. Manocha was previously Executive Vice President of Worldwide Operations at Spansion. Prior to Spansion, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Manufacturing Officer at NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors), where he was responsible for worldwide IC manufacturing, supply chain management and purchasing for the semiconductor division. Manocha held senior executive and management positions at AT&T Microelectronics and AT&T Bell Laboratories, and began his career as a research scientist and was granted over a dozen U.S. and international patents for several novel inventions in the field of technology for microelectronics.
Norling is the former Chairman of Chartered Semiconductor and also served as interim CEO of that company in 2002. He has over three decades of working experience in the electronics industry, with global breadth and deep customer relationships. Norling was with Motorola Inc. from 1965 to 2000 holding various positions, including President of the Semiconductor Products Sector for seven years, from 1986 to 1993. He was also president of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region in 1993, deputy to the chief executive officer in 1998 and president of the Personal Communications Sector from 1999 until 2000, when he retired from Motorola. In 2001, he joined the board of Chartered Semiconductor.
Ajami has been CEO of ATIC since November 2008, leading the investment company through strategic acquisitions of semiconductor manufacturing assets and the creation of GLOBALFOUNDRIES as well as other investments in innovative start-up companies such as Calxeda. Ajami brings strong customer and partner relationships to GLOBALFOUNDRIES with a focus on investment discipline. He joined ATIC from Mubadala Development Company, where he was Associate Director of Acquisitions and led the initial investment in AMD in 2007. Prior to Mubadala, he held several positions in Silicon Valley, including Packard Bell/NEC.
About GLOBALFOUNDRIES
GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the world's first full-service semiconductor foundry with a truly global manufacturing and technology footprint. Launched in March 2009 through a partnership between AMD [NYSE: AMD] and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), GLOBALFOUNDRIES provides a unique combination of advanced technology, manufacturing excellence and global operations. With the integration of Chartered in January 2010, GLOBALFOUNDRIES significantly expanded its capacity and ability to provide best-in-class foundry services from mainstream to the leading edge. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is headquartered in Silicon Valley with manufacturing operations in Singapore, Germany, and a new leading-edge fab under construction in Saratoga County, New York. These sites are supported by a global network of R&D, design enablement, and customer support in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
About ATIC
The Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) was created in 2008. A technology investment company wholly owned by the Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi, ATIC is focused on making significant investments in the advanced technology sector, both locally and internationally. Its mandate is to generate returns that deliver long-term benefits to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
ATIC seeks to leverage the unique advantages it enjoys as an investor from the Emirate of Abu Dhabi to identify and realize long-term investment opportunities in the highly competitive and capital-intensive advanced technology sector. These advantages include significant and reliable capital, a patient investment philosophy, and a subsequently long-term investment horizon
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Quote 17 :
Globalfoundries' Fab 8 Has Come A Long Way, Baby
RogerKay
11/19/2014 @ 11:40AM
Not long after Tom Caulfield, general manager of Globalfoundries’ Fab 8 — the largest silicon foundry in the United States — came into the conference room and sat down, he looked over at me and said, “You have a tick crawling on your shoulder.”
He made as if to do something about it, but Jason Gorss, the company’s PR manager and a giant of man, was closer at hand. He leaped up, grabbed a tissue from a nearby table, snagged the pesky arachnid, and disposed of it.
“Spotting defects is what I do,” Caulfield continued, unperturbed.
That’s certainly one way of putting it. Another way is to say that, as general manager, he is responsible for the quality of output in one of the most advanced chip manufacturing facilities in the United States. Chips are made in batches on wafers, which are about a foot in diameter, and each wafer is like an unbelievably complicated cake that needs to be mixed and baked just right in order to maximize the number of working chips on it. Any little bug in the batter, and one or more chips won’t fire up. And some of those chips sell for hundreds of dollars apiece.
The tick came from an informal part of the plant tour, when a hard-hat worker named Ty drove us in a rugged construction vehicle into an area that used to be used by the federal government for rocket-fuel research. Among the weeds and shrubs now growing over everything, we saw half-buried bunkers with thick steel doors, gantries for holding burning rockets in place to see how much thrust they have, and 10-ton-capable cranes in small enclosed spaces. Wernher von Braun ran a team here after the United States poached him from the Nazis at the end of World War II. At the bottom of various stairways into the earth and under manhole covers in the middle of overgrown fields, concrete plugs hide whatever is buried there. Ticks wait on branch tips for the hapless passerby.
The first time I saw Fab 8, located in Saratoga County, New York, was when then-Governor David Paterson and former Governor George Pateki spaded a couple of symbolic shovels-full of dirt in the Luther Forest to break ground on July 24, 2009.
The second time I paid a visit, about a year later, I had a chance to stand on a 210,000-square-foot slab of concrete that would one day be manufacturing space. Other than a few 10-foot-diameter ventilation pipes laying around on the third floor waiting to be fitted, there wasn’t much else in that cement cathedral.
Last week, I got to see the entire original space enclosed and full of pricey machines — for epitaxy, deposition, etching, lithography, diffusion, implantation, and other processes — that perform sometimes hundreds of precision steps on wafers, small groups of which travel around together in Front Opening Unified Pods (FOUPs) on an overhead rail system that could come out of any science fiction movie. There are even upside-down switching yard/rail depots, where the FOUPs can hang out like bats sleeping in a cave, latched onto the ceiling so as to keep inventory-in-process off the valuable floor space. Some of the more impressive machines, supplied by companies like Applied Materials AMAT -0.48%, ASML, Tokyo Electron , and KLA Tencor, cost as much as $100 million each.
This factory — when yet more capacity is brought on line in the form of 90,000 square feet of adjacent space (where silicon qualification has already begun) and when some of a 200,000-square-foot space nearby that was going to be dedicated entirely to R&D is converted to production — will eventually be able to crank out 60,000 wafers per month.
Everything about this place is gigantic, from the fields of supply tanks full of different gases out back to the network of pipes that carry them into the plant. The clean space itself is the size of six football fields. In a parking lot nearby is an area employees refer to informally as Trailer City, where hundreds of contractors’ trucks sit when not otherwise occupied. Investment in Fab 8 — underwritten primarily by Mubadala Development Corporation, an arm of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi — is $10 billion and climbing. Construction is carried out by 20,000 workers, and the plant itself employs 3,000 people (in a business where, when you look down one of the long corridors in the clean room, you may see one or two people in bunny suits). And those $100 million photolithography machines? Fab 8 has dozens of them. At one point, while in full bunny regalia, I saw a half billion dollars of value sitting in a line about 40 feet long.
All this production is part of Globalfoundries’ program to build a worldwide manufacturing base large enough to justify its owners’ gargantuan investment. Included in this armada of assets are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD’s) former factory in Dresden, Germany, the mostly-Singapore-based fabs acquired when Globalfoundries bought Chartered Semiconductor, and the soon-to-be-brought-on-board plants in Essex Junction, Vermont, and East Fishkill, New York, now owned by IBM.
Part of Caulfield’s mandate is to fill and optimize these fabs. He believes that the demand for microprocessor chips of all types is there, what with the increase in data traffic driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), high-mobility devices like smartphones and tablets, and the build-out of computing infrastructure to accommodate all this traffic. And the group of manufacturers that can afford to build plants to supply microprocessors is only shrinking. The upfront investment is just too high. “It’s a big investment, and it never stops,” said Caulfield. Thus, it’s down to Globalfoundries, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Samsung, and Intel. Intel mostly makes its own chips, but has begun to do foundry work for others. TSMC is a pure foundry. Samsung is a hybrid, making some parts for itself and some for others.
The scale Caulfield is hoping to reach is based on TSMC, which claims to have a current annual capacity of 16.4 million eight-inch equivalent wafers. Globalfoundries doesn’t have to get that big, but it has to be somewhere in the ballpark. The IBM assets will definitely help. Not only does the deal come with two good fabs, a skilled workforce, and a decent customer base, but also outright ownership of ~10,000 patents. These last will help Globalfoundries in any cross-licensing agreements into which it may have to enter.
With respect to the IBM assets, Caulfield asserts that there is more demand than capacity for parts made in both Vermont and New York. He expects to increase revenue two ways: invest in the pinch points constricting production and moving some production elsewhere (likely Fab 8, which still has capacity coming online). The idea is that the fixed R&D and SG&A expenses of these plants can be spread over a larger revenue base, and they can make money for Globalfoundries even though they were unprofitable for IBM. So, Caulfield expects to keep the current IBM employees where they are, crank up the factories, and add production elsewhere. Given current losses at those plants and the $1.5 billion in cash that IBM transferred along with the hard assets, Globalfoundries has several years of running room to turn them around.
Currently, the generation of chips being used by most Globalfoundries customers has features 28nm wide. Although 20nm is theoretically next, Caulfield says it won’t be a high-volume node. 20nm requires a second pass to lay on circuits (adding expense), but does not have 3D (FinFET) features, which competitor Intel already has on its 22nm parts. Recently, Globalfoundries abandoned its own design for 14nm and entered into an alliance with Samsung to make use of Samsung’s 3D technology. The 14nm parts will issue from one Globalfoundries fab and three Samsung fabs for customers worldwide. Caulfield expects 14nm to be big.
Globalfoundries is still an alternative supplier for many of its customers, playing second fiddle to TSMC. Naturally, it has aspirations to turn the tables. And it may have a chance at 10nm, the last node to which the industry can see a clear, if difficult, path. When it entered into the agreement to acquire IBM’s fabs in the Northeast, Globalfoundries acquired the technology that will get it to 10nm.
At the moment, the company is involved in a project that has produced “integrated 10nm flow” at the Albany Nanotech Institute, which is run by IBM and funded by the large equipment suppliers. Soon, Caulfield said, the company will have that same 10nm flow — which involves almost 1,000 process steps — at Fab 8.
Forbes
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Quote 18 :
IBM, GlobalFoundries sale expected to close July 1
Joseph Spector
9:43 p.m. EDT June 19, 2015
ALBANY – An agreement last October for IBM to pay GlobalFoundries to take over IBM's semiconductor manufacturing facilities in East Fishkill and Vermont for $1.5 billion is expected to close on July 1, sources familiar with the negotiations said.
The closing would end months of required regulatory approvals and likely move thousands of employees from IBM onto the GlobalFoundries' payroll at IBM plants in East Fishkill, Dutchess County, and Essex Junction, near Burlington, Vermont.
GlobalFoundries, which has an expanding chip plant in Malta, Saratoga County, announced last year that it would invest $10 billion over the next year in its facilities, mainly in New York. The Malta plant has 3,000 employees and another 3,000 construction workers, along with plans to add 600 staff employees by year's end, the company told the Times Union in Albany earlier this month.
New York has about 14,000 IBM employees, and half are in Dutchess County. IBM also has facilities in Endicott, Broome County, where it was founded, with about 700 workers.
There was no immediate comment from IBM and GlobalFoundries about the expected closing. In the past, the companies have said they anticipated the deal would close sometime this year.
Local and state officials, along with the companies themselves, have praised the sale as a way to preserve jobs and expand the companies' high-tech research and development in New York.
IBM, which is based in Armonk, is planning its own $3 billion investment in chip research — mainly at its research facility in Yorktown and at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute's Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany, where IBM is the major investor in a $4 billion research consortium.
"I think up and down the Hudson Valley, from Yorktown, through Fishkill, through Poughkeepsie, through Albany, up into Malta, this is great news for employment in New York state," IBM vice president John Kelly told reporters during a conference call when the deal was announced Oct. 20.
The deal comes as IBM is rumored to be facing another round of job cuts across the nation. But so far the IBM jobs in New York have largely been saved from the company's downsizing, in large part because of contractual obligations between the state and the company.
In January, GlobalFoundries confirmed that the company has offered jobs to all the IBM workers that are part of the sale. It's been unclear how many offers went out.
Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor, R-East Fishkill, said the sale will be a positive step for local IBM workers, who have faced years of downsizing.
"There is some enthusiasm and optimism and some hope there. Where with IBM it was just watching the jobs and the optimism of the employees whither away," Lalor said.
In February 2014, IBM and Gov. Andrew Cuomo reached a deal to maintain 3,100 high-tech jobs in the Hudson Valley and surrounding areas through 2016. The deal was part of IBM's expansion in Buffalo to create 500 jobs at a $55 million high-tech hub.
Lohud.com (The Journal News)
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