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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FunBunny2 - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
" Price is only an outcome due to lack of volume production"absolutely not, in this case. the cost is in quantities of raw materials. silicon is plentiful and cheap. the rest are far from it. and, as other comments have described, not technically superior.
evanh - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
The raw materials are nothing in the final cost for a high value high volume product.Samus - Thursday, August 30, 2018 - link
Damn you all are WAY the fuck over my head lolboozed - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
Do you think they haven't thought about it?Azethoth - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
Nope. He is a very special boy. He thinks of things nobody else can even dream of.NuclearArmament - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
It doesn't matter, move away from silicon, this is getting ridiculous. You can't keep milking this technology for decades and expect it to, and these multi-billion-dollar technology conglomerates sure can afford to switch to InGaAs or GaAs and still make countless billions more, all while not paying taxes and receiving massive government subsidies.Reflex - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
Moving away from silicon has been an industry goal for decades now. When anyone manages to find a cost-effective method of doing so they will become wildly rich. To date, nobody has pulled that off. Not for lack of effort.FunBunny2 - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
"Moving away from silicon has been an industry goal for decades now. "it's worth noting that the original transistors were made of germanium. hard to find, hard to use. the engineers figured out how to use abundant silicon (thought, not just sand scooped up from the beach). the laws of physics can't be flummoxed.
surt - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
Evidence seems pretty strong that you can in fact milk silicon tech for decades, since that has already happened. And other companies seem to feel pretty confident about milking it for a couple more decades at least. I'm pretty sure if GaAs or some other technology was easy to make profitable, someone would rush to it and crush the competition. Intel has billions in the bank and knows that Samsung is a mortal threat if they don't catch up. Pretty sure they would leapfrog to another technology if they could have an edge on Samsung of even 6 months.name99 - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
What do you WANT from your logic process? THAT is the question -- figure that out, then we can decide if GaAs or other III-V materials make sense.What's holding back the performance of existing CPUs? There are three contenders (which one bites first depends on exactly your target market)
- power density (too much power generated and you can't get enough current in, and you can't cool it fast enough)
- metal speed (also RC) you're limited by how fast wires can transport info from one part of the chip to another
- transistor speed
GaAs ONLY helps with transistor speed. In the process it goes bezerk with power and doesn't help with wire speed.
Beyond that the primary reason our current CPUs don't hit their potential is waiting on memory, which halves (or more) their IPC compared to their full potential. All the ways of dealing with this are built on massive transistor budgets (starting with huge caches). But if you want small transistors, there's no magic in GaAs that makes this easier. It's the exact same lithography, with the exact same difficulties, whether it's multi-patterning or EUV.
It's like a car company wants to make a better car, and your answer is "we need to pour ALL our resources into making better paint". WTF? Does better paint make the car faster? Does it improve power efficiency? Does it solve any actual engineering problem?