AMD's fab company has big plans for small.
We talked a little about GlobalFoundries last month, having a look at why they split from AMD and the relationship the two still share.
Back then they were talking almost exclusively about 45nm, with 32nm being bandied around too - but for GPUs those are not the next milestones, and apply to CPUs instead.
The next chronological shrink in process size is going down to 40nm, and that will be followed eventually by 28nm; the very same size that GlobalFoundries are claiming to have ready:
We intend on competing for AMD's graphics business in the 32nm/28nm technology node.
It's not really a competition however, since AMD don't have too much choice in the market and for the time being GlobalFoundries depends on AMD's business to keep running.
The good news is that their 32nm process is also going well, and they sound very confident that they're prepared:
32nm bulk silicon is already running in Dresden and we'll be ready to accept customer designs later this year with an aggressive production ramp in 2010.
It's not uncommon for a fab to be running the latest in cutting-edge manufacturing techniques, but GlobalFoundries is an exception to this - they make nothing larger than 45nm chips:
Our business model is quite different in that we are leading-edge only. No other foundry company in the world has 100 per cent of their wafer starts on 45nm.
It will be interesting to see how this partnership between the fab and AMD will work out in the long term, but for now head over to Xbit labs to see their full interview with Tom Sonderman, VP of Manufacturing.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012