A robotic arm moves 300 mm silicon semiconductor wafers inside a sorting machine in a cleanroom at a Globalfoundries Inc. semiconductor fabrication plant.
Liesa Johannssen | Bloomberg | Getty Visuals
U.S.-headquartered GlobalFoundries declared Tuesday the opening of its $4 billion growth fabrication plant in Singapore as the contract chipmaker expects “expansion in demand for vital semiconductor chips.”
“I’m assured that more than the up coming decade, this marketplace will double once again,” Thomas Caulfield, president and CEO of GlobalFoundries, instructed CNBC in an job interview ahead of Tuesday’s opening.
Some catalysts involve “new and critical applications, the complete AI and how that will adjust modern society” — which will demand chips and develop need, he stated.
“Automotive appears to be being robust. Cloud for synthetic intelligence appears to be potent. Industrial is keeping in there. Nearly anything shopper associated is even now weak,” Caulfield mentioned Monday.
Foundries are firms that are contracted by semiconductor corporations to manufacture chips. GlobalFoundries makes semiconductors developed by the likes of Qualcomm, MediaTek and NXP Semiconductors, and serves approximately 200 customers globally.
Its chips are identified in smartphones, laptops, cars, digital reality methods, video clip activity consoles, sensible speakers, and are also utilised in AI and 5G.
Singapore supplies 11% of the world’s semiconductors, according to the Singapore Semiconductor Market Association.
Partnership with Singapore
GlobalFoundries is the world’s third-largest foundry by revenue behind TSMC and Samsung, according to industry intelligence service provider TrendForce.
The 23,000-square meter fab facility in Singapore will increase the firm’s world production footprint and enhance its capability to serve customers throughout its producing web-sites in three continents, the press launch explained.
“As Singapore’s most superior semiconductor facility to date, the growth fab will make an added 450,000 wafers (300mm) on a yearly basis, raising GlobalFoundries Singapore’s all round ability to approximately 1.5 million wafers (300mm) every single 12 months,” it added.
GlobalFoundries obtained Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and took over its fabs in 2010.
The site’s recent manufacturing capacity is 720,000 (300mm) wafers and 692,000 (200mm) wafers a 12 months. This kind of wafers are the primary materials for producing chips.
The new facility will produce about 1,000 “high-price” positions in Singapore, of which 95% will consist of products experts, course of action technicians and engineers, the firm claimed. GlobalFoundries at present hires roughly 4,500 workers at the Singapore web site.
GlobalFoundries declared in June 2021 the design of a new fab on its existing Singapore campus, in partnership with the city-state’s Financial Improvement Board, in order to meet up with international desire for semiconductor chips at that time.
The next June, the Nasdaq-listed semiconductor company stated its initial resource experienced been moved into the Singapore facility. It also has manufacturing amenities in the U.S. and Germany.
“GlobalFoundries had a extensive partnership with the Singapore federal government. The Singapore government has industrial procedures about bringing large tech producing, large tech innovation to the area. And it is really why you see so numerous excellent companies having production here,” Caulfield advised CNBC’s Sri Jegarajah.
“What takes place now is when other nations understand how critical semiconductor producing is to their location, for sovereign protection, for provide chain, for economic stability, they too [will] want to have semiconductor manufacturing, and that they will need to regulate their industrial procedures to assistance generate that aggressive landscape where producing and individuals areas are economically aggressive,” he added.
The expansion will also implement AI applications to increase productivity such as wafer pattern recognition to auto-classify and location flaws in wafers, claimed GlobalFoundries.
Correction soon?
Smartphone and Computer system makers are now grappling with excessive inventories of memory chips just after stockpiling them for the duration of the pandemic-induced increase. As inflation soared, consumers have been cutting again on these products and charges for memory chips have fallen.
The likes of Taiwanese semiconductor foundry TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung have reported declines in next-quarter earnings as weak need for memory chips continued.
“We have observed in the second quarter of this calendar year, inventories at semiconductor firms nonetheless climb but at a a lot muted charge,” explained Caulfield. “The good news is we have also observed the stock further down the supply chain, these kinds of as process corporations, start off to go down. And so probably there is a tiny little bit of a glimmer here that stock is starting to suitable.”
Even so, global inflation has to be below manage initially ahead of interest fees can arrive down and buyer expending can be balanced again, specifically in China, he explained.