GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development: Opts To Focus on Specialized Processes
by Anton Shilov & Ian Cutress on August 27, 2018 4:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Semiconductors
- CPUs
- AMD
- GlobalFoundries
- 7nm
- 7LP
GlobalFoundries Press Release
GlobalFoundries Reshapes Technology Portfolio to Intensify Focus on Growing Demand for Differentiated Offerings
Semiconductor manufacturer realigns leading-edge roadmap to meet client need and establishes wholly-owned subsidiary to design custom ASICs.
Santa Clara, Calif., August 27, 2018 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced an important step in its transformation, continuing the trajectory launched with the appointment of Tom Caulfield as CEO earlier this year. In line with the strategic direction Caulfield has articulated, GF is reshaping its technology portfolio to intensify its focus on delivering truly differentiated offerings for clients in high-growth markets.
GF is realigning its leading-edge FinFET roadmap to serve the next wave of clients that will adopt the technology in the coming years. The company will shift development resources to make its 14/12nm FinFET platform more relevant to these clients, delivering a range of innovative IP and features including RF, embedded memory, low power and more. To support this transition, GF is putting its 7nm FinFET program on hold indefinitely and restructuring its research and development teams to support its enhanced portfolio initiatives. This will require a workforce reduction, however a significant number of top technologists will be redeployed on 14/12nm FinFET derivatives and other differentiated offerings.
“Demand for semiconductors has never been higher, and clients are asking us to play an ever-increasing role in enabling tomorrow’s technology innovations,” Caulfield said. “The vast majority of today’s fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore’s Law. We are shifting our resources and focus by doubling down on our investments in differentiated technologies across our entire portfolio that are most relevant to our clients in growing market segments.”
In addition, to better leverage GF’s strong heritage and significant investments in ASIC design and IP, the company is establishing its ASIC business as a wholly-owned subsidiary, independent from the foundry business. A relevant ASIC business requires continued access to leading-edge technology. This independent ASIC entity will provide clients with access to alternative foundry options at 7nm and beyond, while allowing the ASIC business to engage with a broader set of clients, especially the growing number of systems companies that need ASIC capabilities and more manufacturing scale than GF can provide alone.
GF is intensifying investment in areas where it has clear differentiation and adds true value for clients, with an emphasis on delivering feature-rich offerings across its portfolio. This includes continued focus on its FDXTM platform, leading RF offerings (including RF SOI and high-performance SiGe), analog/mixed signal, and other technologies designed for a growing number of applications that require low power, real-time connectivity, and on-board intelligence. GF is uniquely positioned to serve this burgeoning market for “connected intelligence,” with strong demand in new areas such as autonomous driving, IoT and the global transition to 5G.
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Atari2600 - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
How much of those billions had they already invested though? At this point, I'd expect that over 95% of the funds were already committed and they are actually not saving too much.Sure - they would have lost more money on initial ramp of 7nm - but would they then gain more back over the next 20 years by having 7nm to offer clients, and stopping development of any smaller nodes beyond 7nm?
BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
On the other hand, (assuming things were coming along as well as they say) they're not far off from their targeted launch date and most of the research costs and initial fabrication capability costs (and associated equipment) are already sunk. One might make the case that they could have recouped some of those losses if they had launched the first 7nm process and ceased development after that. As it is, they have two extremely expensive ASML Twinscan NXE devices already installed that they no longer have use for (re-purposing them may or may not be practical). This all seems like they gave up a bird in the hand for two in the bush.rahvin - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
The biggest factor in the cancellation is probably the cost escalation. If the 7nm fab had come in at the $8 Billion predicted a few years ago they probably would have went ahead but when EUV costs went crazy the resulting fab costs went to ridiculous. There is no conceivable way GloFo could have built a fab costing $20 Billion. They didn't have the revenue or financing for such a cost. At $8 Billion the fab was within their spending with revenues of $6 billion or so, but a capital expense that's 4 times your annual revenue? I doubt there's a company in existence that could afford that without absolutely guaranteed returns.This is the consequence of the EUV price increases and those costs weren't known until very recently.
levizx - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
Plenty of people still uses 65nm. Besides, 14/12nm is very competitive, 5/3nm won't be much different from 7nm, we are talking about 3 steps before the end of the road here.levizx - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
*90nmtransistortechnologist - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
90nm was the first sub-micron fabrication technology? You're forgetting about700 nm
500 nm
350 nm
250 nm
180 nm
130 nm
it's been a long road and many of these older nodes are still in volume production
HiDensity - Wednesday, August 29, 2018 - link
Well...the former IBM fab (now GF) in Vermont is just that. It's a 200mm fab that never went below 90nm. Instead they diversified their offerings. Found a niche space in RF and have been running close to fully loaded for years now (sometimes a little under, sometime over). While I don't think this move is smart in the long term, there are plenty of chips to be made on older technologies. Think you would be surprised how many 130nm chips there are in current cell phones. People forget there is more than just a processor in there.evanh - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
None of which makes it expensive.Yojimbo - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
Well that seems to hang IBM out to dry. On the other hand I guess it releases them from whatever wafer agreement they have with GF. Maybe IBM will sell their Power CPU business.KAlmquist - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
So what does this mean for AMD? First of all, AMD has already announced that it will be building some Zen 2 chips on the TSMC 7nm process:https://www.anandtech.com/show/13122/amd-rome-epyc...
So AMD has already done the work of porting the Zen 2 design to the TSMC process. The only question is whether TSMC has the capacity to produce as many chips as AMD can sell.
We are told that the Wafer Supply Agreement is being renegotiated rather than abandoned. The point of the WSA, as I understand it, was to commit AMD to buying some minimum number of chips each year in order to allow Global Foundries to recover the cost of developing new nodes. Since GF is no longer going to be developing new nodes or processes for AMD, it would make sense to dump the WSA. Perhaps AMD wants to have a WSA in effect for another year or so in order to have GF commit to producing a sufficient number of 14nm and 12mn chips for AMD to meet demand until AMD can switch most of its product line over to 7nm.