GlobalFoundries will open a new factory in Chengdu, China, to make inexpensive chips for wireless devices.
GlobalFoundries will open a new factory in Chengdu, China, to make inexpensive chips for wireless devices.
The chipmaker, once part of microprocessor designer AMD , also plans to expand production at existing fabrication plants in the U. S., Germany, and Singapore, it said Friday. It makes chips for AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, and Mediatek, among others.
Beginning next year, the new fab in China — a joint venture with the municipality of Chengdu — will produce chips on 300-millimeter wafers using standard manufacturing techniques, the company said.
Sometime in 2019, it will switch to a different manufacturing process, FD-SOI (fully depleted silicon on insulator), which GlobalFoundries calls 22FDX. That process is particularly suitable for the low-cost manufacture of the radio-frequency chips used in smartphones, cars, and the internet of things, the company said.
GlobalFoundries already uses 22FDX at its Fab 1 plant in Dresden, Germany, where it plans to increase capacity by 40 percent over the next three years.
Engineers in Dresden are already working on 12FDX, the successor to 22FDX, so-called because it will produce chips with a 12-nanometer feature size rather than the 22nm of the existing process.
