GLOBALFOUNDRIES to Deliver Industry’s Leading-Performance Offering of 7nm FinFET Technology

Com­pa­ny extends its lea­ding-edge road­map for pro­ducts deman­ding the ulti­ma­te pro­ces­sing power

San­ta Cla­ra, Calif., Sep­tem­ber 15, 2016 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announ­ced plans to deli­ver a new lea­ding-edge 7nm Fin­FET semi­con­duc­tor tech­no­lo­gy that will offer the ulti­ma­te in per­for­mance for the next era of com­pu­ting appli­ca­ti­ons. This tech­no­lo­gy pro­vi­des more pro­ces­sing power for data cen­ters, net­wor­king, pre­mi­um mobi­le pro­ces­sors, and deep lear­ning applications.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ new 7nm Fin­FET tech­no­lo­gy is expec­ted to deli­ver more than twice the logic den­si­ty and a 30 per­cent per­for­mance boost com­pared to today’s 16/14nm foundry Fin­FET offe­rings. The plat­form is based on an indus­try-stan­dard Fin­FET tran­sis­tor archi­tec­tu­re and opti­cal litho­gra­phy, with EUV com­pa­ti­bi­li­ty at key levels. This approach will acce­le­ra­te the pro­duc­tion ramp through signi­fi­cant re-use of tools and pro­ces­ses from the company’s 14nm Fin­FET tech­no­lo­gy, which is curr­ent­ly in volu­me pro­duc­tion at its Fab 8 cam­pus in Sara­to­ga Coun­ty, N.Y. GLOBALFOUNDRIES plans to make an addi­tio­nal mut­li-bil­li­on dol­lar invest­ment in Fab 8 to enable deve­lo­p­ment and pro­duc­tion for 7nm FinFET.

The indus­try is con­ver­ging on 7nm Fin­FET as the next long-lived node, which repres­ents a uni­que oppor­tu­ni­ty for GLOBALFOUNDRIES to com­pe­te at the lea­ding edge,” said GLOBALFOUNDRIES CEO San­jay Jha. “We are well posi­tio­ned to deli­ver a dif­fe­ren­tia­ted 7nm Fin­FET tech­no­lo­gy by tap­ping our years of expe­ri­ence manu­fac­tu­ring high-per­for­mance chips, the talent and know-how of our for­mer IBM Microelec­tro­nics col­le­agues and the world-class R&D pipe­line from our rese­arch alli­ance. No other foundry can match this lega­cy of manu­fac­tu­ring high-per­for­mance chips.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES made a bold decis­i­on to jump direct­ly from 14nm to 7nm–a decis­i­on that is now sup­port­ed by seve­ral lea­ding semi­con­duc­tor com­pa­nies as they see only mar­gi­nal per­for­mance and power bene­fits for the high cost of the 10nm pro­cess node,” said Jim McGre­gor, foun­der and prin­ci­pal ana­lyst at TIRIAS Rese­arch. “Much like the 28nm and 16/14nm pro­cess nodes, 7nm appears to be the next major pro­cess node that will be wide­ly lever­a­ged by the enti­re semi­con­duc­tor indus­try for at least the next decade.”

Lea­ding-edge tech­no­lo­gies like GLOBALFOUNDRIES 7nm Fin­FET are an important part of how we deli­ver our long-term road­map of com­pu­ting and gra­phics pro­ducts that are capa­ble of powe­ring the next gene­ra­ti­on of com­pu­ting expe­ri­en­ces,” said Dr. Lisa Su, pre­si­dent and CEO, AMD. “We look for­ward to con­ti­nuing our clo­se col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with GLOBALFOUNDRIES as they extend the solid exe­cu­ti­on and tech­no­lo­gy foun­da­ti­on they are buil­ding at 14nm to deploy high-per­for­mance, low-power 7nm tech­no­lo­gy in the coming years.”

IBM is com­mit­ted to pushing the limits of semi­con­duc­tor tech­no­lo­gy as part of its aggres­si­ve long term rese­arch agen­da,” said Arvind Krish­na, seni­or vice pre­si­dent and direc­tor of IBM Rese­arch. “IBM Rese­arch con­ti­nues to col­la­bo­ra­te with GLOBALFOUNDRIES in deve­lo­ping new ide­as, new skills and new tech­no­lo­gies that will help acce­le­ra­te our joint rese­arch in 7nm tech­no­lo­gy and beyond.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES will deli­ver a com­pre­hen­si­ve and com­pe­ti­ti­ve IP libra­ry, co-opti­mi­zed with pro­cess deve­lo­p­ment. To enable cus­to­mers to acce­le­ra­te adop­ti­on of 7nm Fin­FET tech­no­lo­gy, GLOBALFOUNDRIES has expan­ded its stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with INVECAS bey­ond 14LPP and FDX™ pro­ces­ses to now include foundry IP deve­lo­p­ment for 7nm pro­cess tech­no­lo­gies. This will pro­vi­de cus­to­mers with a strong foun­da­ti­on to build ear­ly designs that meet their per­for­mance, power and area requirements.

INVECAS spe­cia­li­zes in pro­vi­ding unri­va­led IP solu­ti­ons, ASIC and design ser­vices to GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ cus­to­mers that span the wide-ran­ge of GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ lea­ding edge Fin­FET and FDX pro­ces­ses,” said Dasa­rad­ha Gude, CEO, INVECAS. “Our stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with GLOBALFOUNDRIES com­bi­ned with our tail­or-made foundry IP model allows us to deve­lop a 7nm Fin­FET pro­cess foun­da­ti­on IP that meets the chal­len­ging per­for­mance requi­re­ments of 7nm cus­to­mers’ lea­ding-edge applications.”

Buil­ding on the suc­cess of its 14LPP tech­no­lo­gy plat­form, GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 7nm Fin­FET tech­no­lo­gy is posi­tio­ned to enable next-gene­ra­ti­on com­pu­ting appli­ca­ti­ons that demand ultra-high per­for­mance, from high-end mobi­le SoCs to pro­ces­sors for cloud ser­vers and net­wor­king infra­struc­tu­re. The company’s high-per­for­mance offe­rings are com­ple­men­ted by its 22FDXTM and 12FDXTM tech­no­lo­gies, which have been deve­lo­ped to meet the ultra-low-power requi­re­ments of the next gene­ra­ti­on of intel­li­gent con­nec­ted devices, from mobi­le com­pu­ting and 5G con­nec­ti­vi­ty to arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence and auto­no­mous vehicles.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 7nm Fin­FET tech­no­lo­gy will be sup­port­ed by a full plat­form of foun­da­ti­on and com­plex intellec­tu­al pro­per­ty (IP), inclu­ding an appli­ca­ti­on-spe­ci­fic inte­gra­ted cir­cuit (ASIC) offe­ring. Test chips with IP from lead cus­to­mers have alre­a­dy star­ted run­ning in Fab 8. The tech­no­lo­gy is expec­ted to be rea­dy for cus­to­mer pro­duct design starts in the second half of 2017, with ramp to risk pro­duc­tion in ear­ly 2018.

ABOUT GLOBALFOUNDRIES

GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the world’s first full-ser­vice semi­con­duc­tor foundry with a tru­ly glo­bal foot­print. Laun­ched in March 2009, the com­pa­ny has quick­ly achie­ved sca­le as one of the lar­gest found­ries in the world, pro­vi­ding a uni­que com­bi­na­ti­on of advan­ced tech­no­lo­gy and manu­fac­tu­ring to more than 250 cus­to­mers. With ope­ra­ti­ons in Sin­ga­po­re, Ger­ma­ny and the United Sta­tes, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the only foundry that offers the fle­xi­bi­li­ty and secu­ri­ty of manu­fac­tu­ring cen­ters span­ning three con­ti­nents. The company’s 300mm fabs and 200mm fabs pro­vi­de the full ran­ge of pro­cess tech­no­lo­gies from main­stream to the lea­ding edge. This glo­bal manu­fac­tu­ring foot­print is sup­port­ed by major faci­li­ties for rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and design ena­blem­ent loca­ted near hubs of semi­con­duc­tor acti­vi­ty in the United Sta­tes, Euro­pe and Asia. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is owned by Muba­d­a­la Deve­lo­p­ment Com­pa­ny. For more infor­ma­ti­on, visit http://www.globalfoundries.com.