Items tagged with GlobalFoundries
Intel has vowed to aggressively expand its chip manufacturing business, and a huge part of that effort could apparently include buying GlobalFoundries, which was spun off of AMD over a decade ago. It's said Intel is willing to pay around $30 billion if a deal can be hammered out. That would rank as Intel's biggest acquisition ever. Whether or not a deal can be consummated remains to be seen, but this a bold and ambitious move that could shake up the semiconductor industry. It might also be the kind of thing Intel had in mind when it brought back Pat Gelsinger to serve as the company's chief executive officer, following the departure of Bob Swan. That's not to say Intel had planned a buyout of...
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Intel continues to lure high-level talent from other heavy hitters in the technology industry. It's latest grab is Dr. Gary Patton, who most recently served at the chief technology officer (CTO) at GlobalFoundries. He now joins Intel as corporate vice president and general manager of design enablement, and will report to Mike Mayberry, Intel's CTO. Dr. Patton brings with him a wealth of experience in the semiconductor industry. In his role at GlobalFoundries, he was responsible for the fab's chip technology research and development roadmap, operations, and execution. He served in that role for more than four years, from July 2015 until his departure this month. Prior to working at GlobalFoundries,...
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is countersuing rival semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries, alleging several instances of patent infringement related to the company's 40-nanometer, 28-nanometer, 22-nanometer, 14-nanometer, and 12-nanometer process nodes. As part of the lawsuit, TSMC is seeking "substantial monetary damages." The lawsuit appears to be in retaliation to multiple lawsuits GlobalFoundries filed in the US and Germany back on August 26. In its complaints, GlobalFoundries accused TSMC of infringing on 16 of its patents related to its 28nm, 16nm, 12nm, 10nm, and its most recent 7nm production lines. GlobalFoundries asked for an injunction on certain products that...
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GlobalFoundries rocked the tech industry yesterday when it announced that it had filed multiple lawsuits in the United States and in Germany alleging patent infringement abuses by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and its partners/customers. At the heart of the lawsuits are 16 patents covering 28nm, 16nm, 12nm, 10nm, and 7nm product lines. “For years, while we have been devoting billions of dollars to domestic research and development, TSMC has been unlawfully reaping the benefits of our investments," wrote GlobalFoundries SVP Gregg Barlett in a statement yesterday. "This action is critical to halt Taiwan Semiconductor’s unlawful use of our vital assets and...
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It looks like we have another patent fight brewing in the tech world, and this time the battle is between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and GlobalFoundries. The latter has filed multiple lawsuits against the former, alleging infringement on 16 patents. GlobalFoundries filed the lawsuits with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and with the Regional Court of Dusseldorf in Germany. The reason why this particular legal showdown is so significant is because TSMC manufactures a wide range of chips covering a large segment of tech products on the market. For example, TSMC manufacturers GPU for NVIDIA (ala the GeForce RTX/RTX Super) and Qualcomm's family of dominant...
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Following a downsizing effort that began last year, GlobalFoundries may be in search of a buyer. This would be a major move in the semiconductor sector, as GlobalFoundries is the world's third largest foundry company, behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung Electonics. Global Foundries holds an 8.4 share of the global foundry market. Intel is not included because it manufacturers semiconductors for its own products, as opposed to building them for others. Just last month, Global Foundries sold its 200mm Fab 3E in Tampines, Singapore to Vanguard International Semiconductor for $236 million. The sale included buildings, facilities, equipment, and intellectual property...
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AMD made two big announcements after the closing bell today that affects its hardware business. There is some executive shuffling on the personnel side, and some changes with regards to 7nm production. On the personnel side, Jim Anderson, who served as AMD's General Manager and Senior Vice President of Global Computing and Graphics Sales, is leaving the company effective September 4th. Anderson decided to leave his post to take a position as President and CEO of Lattice Semiconductor. This is quite the move up the corporate latter for Anderson, who will also serve on the company's board of directors. "Jim brings a strong combination of business and technical leadership with a deep understanding...
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AMD thrust itself back into the conversation at the both the high-end processor and graphics markets with its Ryzen and Vega architectures, respectively, and also laid the groundwork for remaining competitive as it builds upon each one. To that end, AMD announced at the GlobalFoundries Technology Conference that it will be transitioning its "graphics and clients products" from its current 14-nanometer LPP FinFET process to 12nm LP technology in 2018. Based on what we know up to this point, our guess is that the move to 12nm on the CPU side will be a die shrink of Ryzen as opposed to new processors based on Zen 2. The latter would represent a deviation from AMD's previously disclosed roadmap....
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We are just a few days away from the comsumer launch of AMD’s next generation Vega graphics architecture, which will underpin the Radeon RX Vega family. However, there is already talk about what’s coming after Vega; and that is Navi. Up until this point, not much has been said about Navi architecture, other than vague descriptions citing “scalability” and “next generation memory”. Other than that, we’ve been told that Navi will be built on a 7nm FinFET process when it launches next year. Today, however, a new report is suggesting that Navi will be the first GPU from AMD with circuity that is dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) operations. According to Fudzilla, Raja Koduri’s Radeon Technologies...
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IBM has teamed up with semiconductor equipment suppliers and manufacturing bigwigs GlobalFoundries and Samsung to develop a new process for building silicon nanosheet transistors. This new process paves a path to 5-nanometer, with the subsequent "fingernail-sized" chips packing a staggering 30 billion transistors inside. Hooray for keeping Moore's Law intact. Image Source: Connie Zhou via IBM "This announcement is the latest example of the world-class research that continues to emerge from our groundbreaking public-private partnership in New York," said Gary Patton, CTO and Head of Worldwide R&D at GlobalFoundries. "As we make progress toward commercializing 7nm in 2018 at our Fab 8 manufacturing...
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With much of the performance computing market sitting on top of 14nm (or similar) nodes, it's time to look to the future. GlobalFoundries is looking past 10nm, as it sees 7nm as the next major step in process technology, and it's not alone. In a new announcement, the semiconductor foundry said that it will be able to deliver 7nm production soon, based on FinFET designs. Complementing that, it'll be able to "significantly" re-use much of the same equipment that was used for 14nm, which is currently being used at its Fab 8 campus in New York. Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at TIRIAS Research, said that this was a good move for the foundry. According to McGregor, the move to 10nm simply...
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Today's a good day for for AMD. GlobalFoundries, the former manufacturing arm of AMD that became fully independent in 2012, announced today that it achieved "silicon success" with the first AMD products using a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process. Going forward, multiple AMD products will benefit from this. The 14nm FinFET process was developed by Samsung and licensed to GlobalFoundries last year as part of a strategic collaboration the two firms entered into. It was always the intention of GlobalFoundries to integrate 14nm FinFET technology into products for AMD, the latter of which is currently in the process of validating 14nn Low Power Plus (14LPP) production samples. "FinFET technology is...
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Earlier today, Barron's published an article speculating that GlobalFoundries would delay its 14nm product ramp by several quarters as it struggled with unspecified production problems. GlobalFoundries has denied any such issues in a statement to Hot Hardware, and has specifically told us that its 14nm ramp plans remain on-track. The state of GlobalFoundries 14nm ramp is important for multiple reasons. Earlier this year, the company announced that it would drop its own plans for a hybrid 14nm/20nm hybrid node (14nm XM) and would instead adopt Samsung's 14nm process technology. At least some of this capacity would be dedicated to Samsung's production, making GF a second-source facility for...
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Intel's 14nm Broadwell Production Throws Down Gauntlet For Major Semiconductor Competitors In Mobile
If Intel's recent 14nm Broadwell Y unveil has made anything clear, it's that the company is now determined to go toe-to-toe with every foundry manufacturer at the 14nm node. It wasn't initially clear if this would be the case. While Intel made a big splash with its first 14nm announcements, news of the delays and a robust rebuttal from TSMC concerning the health and capability of its own 20nm and 16nm offerings made it seem as though Intel might have been rocked back on its heels and fighting a defensive front. Where other semiconductor manufacturers have openly acknowledged the end of Moore's law's cost scaling (meaning 20nm and 16nm silicon is expected to be more expensive than previous generations),...
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Late last month, the Wall Street Journal leaked news of a partnership with TSMC, in an agreement that put a formal signature on what sources have previously implied was years of behind-the-scenes collaboration. Apple has explored its options with foundry partners that aren't Samsung for several years as its relationship with that company has grown sour. Last year, Apple reportedly attempted to buy a significant stake in a particular fab for a billion dollars, but CEO Morris Chang rebuffed the idea (or at least, the price tag), saying that TSMC preferred to retain flexibility and control of its own technology roadmap. Now there are reports that Apple is considering a similar alliance with GlobalFoundries,...
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Last week, we paid a visit to ARM's headquarters in Cambridge, England and sat down with the company for multiple deep dives into its structure, processor architecture, and the future of its product design. The semiconductor market for mobile and hand-held devices has changed dramatically in the past six years and ARM has had to evolve alongside it. This is the first in a series of articles designed to profile different aspects of the company and its competition with Intel... ARMs Race: Licensing vs. Manufacturing In Mobile...
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Last week, we paid a visit to ARM's headquarters in Cambridge, England and sat down with the company for multiple deep dives into its structure, processor architecture, and the future of its product design. The semiconductor market for mobile and hand-held devices has changed dramatically in the past six years and ARM has had to evolve along side it. This is the first in a series of articles designed to profile different aspects of the company and its competition with Intel. ARM's Licensing and Design Model Most readers are aware that ARM has a very different business model than Intel. Specifically, ARM licenses a wide range of technologies in a vast number of markets. The majority of...
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The big news of the day, based on a leaked Intel roadmap, is that Broadwell won't launch in 2014. Instead, we'll see a Haswell refresh with unknown performance characteristics (slightly higher clocks are the best bet) and, late in the year, a "Haswell-E" server part on the X99 chipset. Ivy Bridge-E, the six-core LGA2011 CPU, is still set for later this year, on the X79 chipset. The big assumption coming out of this is that Intel has delayed 14nm production and that Broadwell wont' ship at all in 2014. Based on sources we've spoken to, this isn't accurate. The flaw in the current story is that it implicitly assumes that desktop is the focus of Intel's business and that the company would naturally...
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It's been obvious for weeks that Intel's earnings call this afternoon wasn't going to have much good news in it. With total PC shipments falling 13% quarter-on-quarter -- the worst decline in nearly 20 years -- there was no way Intel would escape being hit by that drop. Today, Santa Clara reported that its Q1 profits fell 25%, to $2B, down from $2.7B in the first quarter of 2012. Gross margins took a hammering, as well, falling to 56.2% from 64% in Q1 2012. Despite these problems, Otellini was upbeat. "“Amidst market softness, Intel performed well in the first quarter and I’m excited about what lies ahead for the company,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. “We...
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AMD announced late today that it's reached a new wafer supply agreement (WSA) with GlobalFoundries. This is the second time AMD has renegotiated the agreement this year, and while the new arrangement offers Sunnyvale some needed flexibility, it carries further penalties as well. First, a few quick explanations. The WSA governs the purchase and manufacture of microprocessors. AMD agrees to buy a certain number of wafers from GF per quarter and it negotiates payment for those wafers in several different ways. In 2011, AMD and GF agreed that Sunnyvale only had to pay GlobalFoundries for fully functional chips. At the time, GlobalFoundries was having problems ramping Llano. This agreement heavily...
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Ready to nerd out? Great. Globalfoundries has rolled out details surrounding its new FinFET transistor architecture, which is engineered specifically with mobile devices in mind. No real surprise, given that mobile is quite clearly the future. Desktops have already fallen behind laptops, and seems just a matter of time before tablets start making a serious dent in the laptop market -- at least for average, non-gaming consumers. Now, Globalfoundries is showcasing its 14nm-XM offering, which is said to be the industry's finest non-planar architecture. The technology is expected to deliver a 40-60% improvement in battery life when compared to today's two-dimensional planar transistors at the...
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Last month, TSMC's CEO Morris Chang made waves when he suggested that it could make sense for the company to dedicate fabs to particular customers. Fresh reports today, however, suggest that both Apple and TSMC made major bids for exclusivity on future TSMC production facilities, and both were rejected. Does this mean Chang's earlier comments were misinterpreted? No -- but it does demonstrate the difference between what Chang/TSMC is willing to contemplate and what companies like Qualcomm and Apple want. TSMC may be willing to commit full fabs to customer-specific production, but the company isn't going to sign a piece of paper that gives a customer direct control over what happens to those fabs...
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