In response to changing industry dynamics, AMD announced in October 2008 a new strategy to focus exclusively on the design phase of semiconductor product development. To achieve that strategy, AMD partnered with Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi to create a new joint venture company designed to become the world’s first truly global contract manufacturer of semiconductor products (or “foundry”).
On March 4, 2009, GLOBALFOUNDRIES launched as the new joint venture combining AMD’s leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing capabilities with the long-term financial focus of ATIC, creating a new global semiconductor manufacturing foundry with approximately 3,000 employees and serving AMD as its first customer.
Through the course of 2009, the company announced several new customers and new strategic partnerships, including ARM, ST Microelectronics, Broadcom and Qualcomm. In June of that same year, GLOBALFOUNDRIES broke ground on the Fab 8 campus, the company’s newest 300mm fab in Saratoga County, New York.
In January 2010, the company announced the completion of its merger of operations with Chartered Semiconductor, a global semiconductor foundry company based in Singapore. At the time, Chartered consisted of about 7,000 employees, mostly based at the company’s 6 fabs in Singapore. The addition of Chartered added more than 150 customers to the company’s portfolio, afforded world class production capabilities in both main stream and leading edge technologies and allowed the company to offer a new platform for innovation to drive the current and future generations of semiconductor products for customers around the globe.
In 2011, GLOBALFOUNDRIES continued to add customers and reach significant manufacturing milestones as AMD’s 32nm processor shipments increased by more than 80 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. In fact, GLOBALFOUNDRIES exited 2011 as the only foundry to have shipped in the hundreds of thousands of 32nm High K Metal Gate wafers.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES is a first-of-its-kind global foundry model, leveraging assets from around the world to best meet the needs of the global marketplace. The company is making substantial capital investments to build a truly global footprint, with manufacturing operations spanning three continents for flexible and secure supply. With more than 13,000 people worldwide, and manufacturing centers in Germany, the United States and Singapore, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is delivering advanced technologies to market in high volume and mature yield faster than any other foundry in the world.
This global manufacturing footprint is supported by major facilities for research, development, and design enablement located across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, with offices in Abu Dhabi and corporate offices in Silicon Valley. The collective strength of these operations is unprecedented for a semiconductor foundry and will be unparalleled in the industry
Today, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is wholly owned by ATIC and is the world’s second largest independent semiconductor foundry and is gaining strong momentum in the global semiconductor industry.
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