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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phoenix_rizzen - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
It's mentioned in the article that AMD is targetting TSMC 7nm.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
That's one of the open questions here. 80% of TSMC's 7 nm capacity is contractually bound for Apple's needs, leaving precious few wafers for everybody else. eetimes published an interesting article on this a few days ago. Basically, players like Qualcomm and Huawei (HiSilikon) will likely have to get chummy with Sammy if they want their 855 Snapdragon in 7 nm in usable quantities, because Samsung is now the only other fab operator supposedly close or ready for 7 nm. I do wonder where all the other 7 nm silicon for EPYCs, Ryzens, and assorted GPUs is supposed to come from now with GloFo out. AFAIK, TSMC is currently the only player with a 7 nm fab fully up-and-running, and that fab is very busy (and contractually obligated) to make all the A12 chips it can. So, this pull-back by GloFo is great news for Samsung; wouldn't surprise me if their stock just jumped a bit.BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
Good news for Samsung, sure. However, they are only an option for AMD if they can get the yields up. Historically, Samsung's process has been competitive with other contract fabs. Though (if I recall correctly), they've struggled with larger chips. ARM chips targeted at phone should be good (they need that for their own chips), but larger ARM chips targeted at servers and larger GPUs have historically been problematic. It is uncertain if large, high performance x86 chips would work out well. If Apple moved a large portion of their orders to Samsung, then TSMC might have the capacity to service all these larger chips. However, with so much of the TSMC capacity tied up by Apple, AMD will likely need to prioritize either CPUs or GPUs. Given recent history, I suspect they will favor server CPU production and probably back down on high end GPUs. Perhaps we'll get another round of smaller mid-range GPUs fabricated at Samsung. Unless Samsung suddenly develops proficiency for fabricating larger chips or TSMC suddenly frees up significant capacity, I suspect this bodes very poorly for competition in high end GPUs.dogzilla - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
I think they are saying that the company isn't big enough to pay for the investment to continue process development at 7 nm and below. You have to make enough wafers to spread the development cost around, and they are just too small, make too few wafers. I worked at companies that have made this same decision, it's called a going out of business strategy. Any customers that might need to migrate to 7 nm and smaller will move elsewhere, usually they are the more profitable customers.Zoomer - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
Exactly. What are you going to sell in 5, 10, 15 years time?PhrogChief - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
'Strategical' is NOT a word.levizx - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
And the Earth is flat.https://www.dictionary.com/browse/strategical
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/strategical
V900 - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
*CRASMASH!*That’s the sound of Moore’s law colliding with physics.
A few years ago, an ex-Intel buffin held a talk on chipmaking at the end of Moore’s law. He predicted it would come at 2016-2020 and around 10nm.
That’s really it then. We’ll get another node at 7nm (eventually) but after that? Slow, incremental improvement.
Few people understand how big of a deal this is, but think about this. All of us grew up in a world where the power and speed of computers and electronics would double roughly every two years.
This exponential growth was a virtual certainty and it fed the biggest prosperity engine in human history. There isn’t many fields and businesses that didn’t in some way benefit from it.
And that’s almost over. There’s a few years left where it almost seems like nothing has changed, but it has.
Some of us have children. Those children won’t live in a world with electronics doubling in speed and capability every few years.
The next generation of video games for them will look pretty much like the last one, unless you’ll know where to look.
For them, it’ll be nothing but slow, incremental improvement year after year: A 2% improvement here. A 1% improvement there. The way it was before the transistor.
The scariest thing is, what will happen to the economy. Trillions of dollars and billions of man hours have been spent in the shadow of Moore’s law the past decades. What will happen, once there isn’t a reason to get a new TV every 4 years? If computers only get a few percent faster every year, will computers become a thing you buy once a decade?
nevcairiel - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link
I don't think the future is quite as grim quite yet. After 7nm there is still EUV for a few more nodes (probably 5 and 3nm, and maybe even 1nm). Thats probably over a decade right there.Maybe in that time, someone will finally figure out an alternative. Carbon-based solutions have been mysteriously hyped for a long time. Graphene transistors? Carbon nanotubes?
Manch - Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - link
"Some of us have children. Those children won’t live in a world with electronics doubling in speed and capability every few years."Oh....the.....horror.....