In its quick 14-year historical past, GlobalFoundries has risen to transform the arena’s third-largest chip foundry. Based totally in upstate New York, GlobalFoundries is not a family identify as a result of it is production semiconductors which might be designed and bought by way of different firms.
However it is quietly serving to energy just about each and every attached software.
“Have a look at each and every digital software in your home, and I might guess you cash that each and every a kind of gadgets has a minimum of one GlobalFoundries chip in it,” Thomas Caulfield, GlobalFoundries CEO, instructed CNBC.
GlobalFoundries chips are within the entirety from smartphones and vehicles to good audio system and Bluetooth-enabled dishwashers. They are additionally within the servers operating generative synthetic intelligence fashions, a marketplace that is booming so briefly that chipmaker Nvidia has surpassed a $1 trillion marketplace cap and is forecasting 170% gross sales enlargement this quarter.
Inside generative AI, GlobalFoundries is not interested by making the robust graphics processing devices (GPUs) used to coach huge language fashions like ChatGPT. As an alternative, the corporate is production chips that carry out purposes like energy control, connecting to presentations, or enabling wi-fi connections.
Caulfield says AI is “the catalyst for our business to double within the subsequent 8 years and GF could have its fair proportion, if now not extra, of that chance.”
5 years in the past, GlobalFoundries made a daring transfer clear of modern chips, exiting a race that was once gained by way of Taiwan Semiconductor Production Corporate.
Now, as tensions with China lift issues over the arena’s reliance on TSMC, and the U.S. and China play technological tug-of-war with export controls, GlobalFoundries unearths itself situated smartly outdoor the geopolitical crosshairs. The corporate has spent about $7 billion to amplify manufacturing in Singapore, Germany, France and upstate New York.
CNBC went to Malta, New York, for a firsthand have a look at the fabrication plant the place GlobalFoundries is including 800 acres, to invite how the corporate plans to stick forward whilst growing the older chips nonetheless crucial for on a regular basis gadgets.
‘It labored out for everyone’
The tale started in 2009, when Complex Micro Units determined to damage off its production operations right into a separate corporate and center of attention fully on designing chips. The newly shaped GlobalFoundries took over AMD’s chip fabrication plant, or fab, in Dresden, Germany. On the time, it was once a three way partnership between AMD and the federal government of Abu Dhabi’s tech funding arm. Moorhead was once operating at AMD.
“Our founder, Jerry Sanders, at AMD stated, ‘actual males have fabs.’ So the considered spinning out the fab from AMD into its personal corporate was once a in reality large deal,” Moorhead stated. AMD “needed to do it,” he added, as a result of “the bills for a forefront fab had been doubling each and every two or 3 years. And presently we are taking a look at investments of campuses upwards of $100 billion.”
For the primary few years, AMD was once GlobalFoundries’ most effective main buyer. AMD has since grown to transform Nvidia’s primary rival for designing GPUs.
“I believe it labored out for everyone,” Moorhead stated.
GlobalFoundries began construction its new fab, and long run headquarters, in Malta in 2009. The following yr, it expanded into Singapore with the acquisition of Chartered Semiconductor. By way of 2015, it had bought IBM’s in-house semiconductor department, taking on manufacturing websites in Vermont and New York. By way of 2018, GlobalFoundries was once a $6 billion industry.
“Sadly, it had a technique that was once now not in a position to provide profitability or unfastened money go with the flow,” stated Caulfield. “So in 2018, once I become the CEO of GlobalFoundries, we determined to make a strategic pivot to center of attention all our power, all our R&D, all of our capital deployment to head be the easiest at those crucial chips. And that started a adventure to turning our corporate round to profitability.”
To at the present time, GlobalFoundries most effective makes 12-nanometer chips and above, or what it calls “crucial” chips.
GlobalFoundries CEO Thomas Caulfield presentations a 300mm wafer to CNBC’s Katie Tarasov at Fab 8 in Malta, New York, on September 5, 2023.
Carlos Waters
“When you do safe pay transactions, whether or not it is in your bank card or in your good cell software, we make the chip that does that,” Caulfield stated. “Do you prefer the images your digital camera takes? Neatly, we make symbol sensor processors that force that digital camera. Do you just like the battery existence in your telephone? We make the PMICs, the ability control ICs that be sure that energy is controlled on those gadgets.”
Throughout the 2021 chip scarcity, GlobalFoundries instructed CNBC it bought out fully. That very same yr, the corporate went public at the Nasdaq.
“In the long run, we in reality want those chips,” stated Daniel Newman, CEO of study company Futurum Team. “We discovered that out as a result of we had parking so much stuffed with pickup vehicles that could not be shipped as a result of they could not put the ECU in or they could not set up energy seats. So GlobalFoundries had a in reality robust marketplace requirement.”
International enlargement
GlobalFoundries is the one some of the global’s best 5 chip foundries primarily based within the U.S. The opposite 4 are Semiconductor Production Global in China, Samsung with fabs in South Korea and the U.S., and United Microelectronics and TSMC, that are each in Taiwan.
“Now not most effective do we have now a prime focus of semiconductor production in Taiwan between TSMC and UMC, however TSMC is two times the dimensions of the opposite 4 firms mixed,” Caulfield stated.
TSMC makes greater than 90% of the arena’s most-advanced microchips, growing vulnerability all over provide chain backlogs in addition to dangers tied to China’s endured threats to invade Taiwan. Like GlobalFoundries, TSMC additionally makes older nodes. Caulfield stated GlobalFoundries is admittedly going after TSMC.
“Now not most effective do we have now aspirations, we predict in sure spaces we now have gained,” Caulfield stated. He pointed to his corporate’s radio frequency chips and silicon on insulator generation.
“Silicon on insulator is a large differentiator relating to energy, and TSMC does not use that,” Moorhead stated.
At a time of geopolitical turmoil, GlobalFoundries is making an investment about $7 billion so as to add capability in portions of the arena with decrease chance.
In Singapore, the corporate simply finished a $4 billion enlargement that it says makes it the rustic’s most-advanced fab. In June, it finalized a handle STMicroelectronics to construct a collectively owned fab in Crolles, France.
Now not all world enlargement endeavors have long past easily, alternatively. In 2017, GlobalFoundries made large plans for a cool in Chengdu, China. In 2020, it sponsored out.
“It grew to become out we had 3 rather huge amenities all over the world already that had been critically underloaded,” Caulfield stated. “Including extra capability at a time once we could not fill our current capability was once simply going to create a larger financial hollow for us.”
The U.S. has just lately enacted a chain of export bans on chip firms sending improved tech to China. By way of most effective generating older nodes, GlobalFoundries says it is been “very minimally” impacted.
Making chips within the U.S.
Even supposing GlobalFoundries’ chips are thought to be legacy nodes, the method and assets wanted are nonetheless extremely advanced. Caulfield stated every silicon wafer is going via a minimum of 1,000 steps over 90 days within the Malta fab. The method calls for in depth cleansing, cooling and chemical remedy, which makes use of a large number of water. GlobalFoundries says Fab 8 makes use of about 4 million gallons of water an afternoon, reclaiming 65% of that.
“Upstate New York is an excellent position for get admission to to high quality and plentiful water,” Caulfield stated.
All of the heavy equipment additionally calls for about 2 gigawatts of energy consistent with day, in step with Hui Peng Koh, who heads up the Malta fab. She stated it is sufficient energy to “run a small town.”
“I might say our lowest-cost energy is within the U.S.,” Caulfield stated. “Numerous our energy in upstate New York, the place this facility is at, comes from hydroelectric, so it is a greener energy. In each Europe and Singapore, a lot of that energy comes off of herbal gasoline.”
Then there is the manpower. GlobalFoundries has 13,000 staff international. About 1,500 other people report back to Koh in Malta. She instructed CNBC it is “difficult to draw ability to this a part of the arena.”
GlobalFoundries just lately established the primary apprenticeship program that is registered within the U.S. to lend a hand expand a semiconductor body of workers in Vermont and New York. In July, TSMC blamed a scarcity of professional hard work for delays to its fab being in-built Arizona.
The prime charge of fabrics and building paintings additionally make construction a cool within the U.S. dearer than in a lot of Asia, so public subsidies had been key for reshoring manufacturing. GlobalFoundries stated New York pitched in additional than $2 billion for the Malta fab. The corporate additionally implemented for price range from the $52 billion nationwide CHIPS and Science Act. That specialize in 12-nanometer and above additionally is helping the corporate stay prices down.
GlobalFoundries’ Fab 8 in Malta, New York, the place Apparatus Engineering Supervisor Chris Belfi led CNBC’s Katie Tarasov on a excursion on September 5, 2023.
GlobalFoundries stated it is striking out 400,000 wafers consistent with yr from its Malta fab. Whilst Caulfield would not put a buck determine at the wafers, he stated at any given time, there is “a couple of half-billion greenbacks value of stock that is operating over the ones 90 days to create product.”
GlobalFoundries’ primary shoppers for this large output of crucial chips are the arena’s biggest fabless chip firms, together with Qualcomm, AMD, NXP and Infineon.
Sooner or later, lots of its chips finally end up within the auto, aerospace, and U.S. protection industries.
GlobalFoundries is understood for making “uniqueness chips” in large, unique offers, like one with Lockheed Martin in June for onshoring manufacturing of sure chips, and a up to date $3 billion settlement with the U.S. Division of Protection.
Newman stated GlobalFoundries has round 50 such long-term agreements.
“Successfully they are announcing, ‘We will be able to create a solid margin dedication capability and if the marketplace shifts, we are going to stand by way of the letter of our settlement,’” he stated.
For firms hit toughest by way of the chip scarcity, a handle GlobalFoundries is a hedge in opposition to it going down once more. In February, Basic Motors put aside unique manufacturing capability on the Malta fab.
“GM, their strains were given held up for terribly cheap elements as a result of they could not get sufficient,” Moorhead stated. “What GM determined is that that is an excessive amount of provide chain chance. We are going to pass without delay to GF.”
GlobalFoundries says automobile is one in every of its fastest-growing segments. It makes many various varieties of chips for vehicles: the microcontrollers for energy seats, airbags and braking; the sensing chips for cameras and Lidar; and battery control chips for electrical cars.
In the meantime, the expansion of GlobalFoundries’ smartphone industry is decelerating, along an industrywide slowdown. GlobalFoundries laid off 800 staff in December and January, and issued weaker-than-expected earnings steerage for the 1/3 quarter.
“Sensible cell gadgets remaining yr represented 46% of our earnings,” Caulfield stated. “Whilst it grew remaining yr, it was once 50% the yr prior to. So we now have been seeking to construct our different industry and to get extra balanced, quite than having this type of prime publicity to good cell gadgets.”