MICLEDI Microdisplays today announced a first closing of its Series A funding round with participation from imec.xpand, PMV, imec, KBC and SFPIM demonstrating strong support for the company's value proposition and commercial and technological progress achieved in the seed round. Series A follows a significant seed round award and additional non-dilutive funding in the form of grants and other vehicles from VLAIO. This brings the company's total funding to date to nearly $30 million.

"The company's achievements during this seed round have been astounding," said Sean Lord, CEO of MICLEDI. "Our door is open to engagements with some of the world's largest and most innovative electronic product manufacturing companies, most of whom are working on their own internal development projects for augmented reality (AR) displays in such diverse use cases as smart-wearable devices and automotive HUDs. This level of total funding to date is almost unheard of for a four-year-old startup."

The U.S. Department of Commerce today announced $1.5 billion in planned direct funding for GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) (GF) as part of the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. This investment will enable GF to expand and create new manufacturing capacity and capabilities to securely produce more essential chips for automotive, IoT, aerospace, defense, and other vital markets.

New York-headquartered GF, celebrating its 15th year of operations, is the only U.S.-based pure play foundry with a global manufacturing footprint including facilities in the U.S., Europe, and Singapore. GF is the first semiconductor pure play foundry to receive a major award (over $1.5 billion) from the CHIPS and Science Act, designed to strengthen American semiconductor manufacturing, supply chains and national security. The proposed funding will support three GF projects:

TrendForce's research indicates a dynamic third quarter for the global foundry industry, marked by an uptick in urgent orders for smartphone and notebook components. This surge was fueled by healthy inventory levels and the release of new iPhone and Android devices in 2H23. Despite persisting inflation risks and market uncertainties, these orders were predominantly executed as rush orders. Additionally, TSMC and Samsung's high-cost 3 nm manufacturing process had a positive impact on revenues, driving the 3Q23 value of the top ten global foundries to approximately US$28.29 billion—a 7.9% QoQ increase.

Looking ahead to 4Q23, the anticipation of year-end festive demand is expected to sustain the inflow of urgent orders for smartphones and laptops, particularly for smartphone components. Although the end-user market is yet to fully recover, pre-sales season stockpiling for Chinese Android smartphones appears to be slightly better than expected, with demand for mid-to-low range 5G and 4G phone APs and continued interest in new iPhone models. This scenario suggests a continued upward trend for the top ten global foundries in Q4, potentially exceeding the growth rate seen in Q3.

GlobalFoundries (GF) announced today it has applied for U.S. CHIPS and Science Act Funding, with two full applications submitted to the CHIPS Program Office of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The submitted applications are for capacity expansion and modernization of GF's U.S. manufacturing facilities.

"As the leading manufacturer of essential semiconductors for the U.S. government, and a vital supplier to the automotive, aerospace and defense, IoT and other markets, GF has submitted our applications to the CHIPS Program Office to participate in the federal grants and investment tax credits enabled by the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act," said Steven Grasso, senior director of global government affairs at GF. "This federal support is critical for GF to continue growing its U.S. manufacturing footprint, strengthening U.S economic security, supply chain resiliency, and national defense."

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) (GF) a new 10-year contract for a supply of securely manufactured, U.S.-made semiconductors for use across a wide range of critical aerospace and defense applications.

With an initial award of $17.3 million this month and an overall 10-year spending ceiling of $3.1 billion, the new contract provides the DoD and its contractors with access to GF's semiconductor technologies manufactured at its U.S. facilities. These GF facilities are DoD-accredited to the highest security level, Trusted Supplier Category 1A, which implements proven stringent security measures to protect sensitive information and manufacture chips with the highest levels of integrity to ensure they are uncompromised.

TrendForce reports an interesting shift in the electronics landscape: dwindling inventories for TV components, along with a surging mobile repair market that's been driving TDDI demand, have sparked a smattering of urgent orders in the Q2 supply chain. These last-minute orders have served as pivotal lifelines, propping up Q2 capacity utilization and revenue for semiconductor foundries. However, the adrenaline rush from these stop-gap orders may be a short-lived phenomenon and is unlikely to be carried over into the third quarter.

On the other hand, demand for staple consumer products like smartphones, PCs, and notebooks remains sluggish, perpetuating a slump in the use of expensive, cutting-edge manufacturing processes. At the same time, traditionally stable sectors—automotive, industrial control, and servers—are undergoing inventory correction. The confluence of these trends has resulted in a sustained contraction for the world's top ten semiconductor foundries. Their global revenue declined by approximately 1.1% for the quarter, amounting to a staggering US$26.2 billion.

TrendForce reports that the global top 10 foundries witnessed a significant 18.6% QoQ decline in revenue during the first quarter of 2023. This decline—amounting to approximately US$27.3 billion—can be attributed to sustained weak end-market demand and the compounded effects of the off-peak season. The rankings also underwent notable changes, with GlobalFoundries surpassing UMC to secure the third position, and Tower Semiconductor surpassing PSMC and VIS to claim the seventh spot.

Declining capacity utilization rate and shipment volume contribute to widened revenue decline
The revenue decline in Q1 was primarily influenced by declining capacity utilization rates and shipment volume across the top 10 foundries. For instance, TSMC generated US$16.74 billion in revenue—marking a 16.2% QoQ drop in revenue. Weakened demand for mainstream applications such as laptops and smartphones led to a significant decline in the utilization rates and revenue of the 7/6 nm and 5/4 nm processes, falling over 20% and 17%, respectively. While the second quarter may see temporary relief coming from rush orders, the persistently low capacity utilization rate indicates that revenue is likely to continue declining, albeit at a slower pace compared to Q1.

GlobalFoundries Inc., a global leader in feature-rich semiconductor manufacturing, and STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, announced today the conclusion of the agreement to create a new, jointly-operated, high-volume semiconductor manufacturing facility in Crolles (France), which was announced on 11 July 2022.

"I would like to thank Minister Le Maire, the French Minister of the Economy and Finance, and his team for their support and the dedication for the last 12+ months that have made celebrating today's milestone possible," said Dr. Thomas Caulfield, President and CEO of GlobalFoundries. "In partnership with ST in Crolles, we are further expanding GF's presence within Europe's dynamic technology ecosystem while benefiting from economies of scale to deliver additional capacity in a highly capital efficient manner. Together we will deliver GF's market leading FDX technology and ST's comprehensive technology roadmap, in alignment with customer demand which is expected to remain high for Automotive, IoT, and Mobile applications over the next decades."

GlobalFoundries (GF) today announced the appointment of Hui Peng Koh as vice president and general manager of the company's semiconductor manufacturing facility in Malta, New York. Building on her experience in leading the 1,200 strong engineering team in Malta for the last three years, Ms. Koh is stepping up to lead GF's most advanced U.S. fab that supports a wide range of customers. She succeeds long time GF executive and industry veteran Peter Benyon who will retire in early July 2023 after more than 40 years in the semiconductor industry including being part of the GF team since the acquisition of Chartered Semiconductor in 2011.

Ms. Koh, an accomplished leader with more than 23 years of semiconductor manufacturing experience, currently serves as vice president of manufacturing engineering at GF. Prior to her current role, she was the director of lithography and held various leadership positions at the company's Malta facility. Previously, she served in several technology development roles at GF's Singapore campus. Ms. Koh earned her master's degree in materials engineering from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

GlobalFoundries (GF) today sued IBM for trade secret misappropriation. The complaint asserts the former semiconductor manufacturing company has unlawfully disclosed GF's confidential IP and trade secrets, after IBM sold its microelectronics business to GF in 2015. The technology at issue was collaboratively developed, over decades, by the companies in Albany, New York and the sole and exclusive right to license and disclose that technology was transferred to GF upon the sale.

In the legal action filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, GF asserts that IBM unlawfully disclosed GF IP and trade secrets to IBM partners including Intel and Japan's Rapidus, a newly formed advanced logic foundry, and by doing so, IBM is unjustly receiving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing income and other benefits.

GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF) (Nasdaq: GFS) today announced preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2022.

Key Fourth Quarter Financial Highlights
Revenue of $2,101 million, up 14% year-over-year.
Gross margin of 29.6% and adjusted gross margin of 30.1%.
Net income of $668 million.
Adjusted EBITDA of $821 million.
Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $3,346 million.

Despite reported record revenues of US$2.1 billion in the third quarter of this year, as well as a record net income of US$336 million, GlobalFoundries is said to be cutting its workforce by as many as 800 people. The job cuts are reported by VTDigger, a local newspaper in Vermont, where GlobalFoundries headquarters are located. According to the paper, GlobalFoundries are looking at cutting back on staff at all its global operations, but it's currently now known where the biggest cuts will take place. According to VTDigger, GlobalFoundries has around 14,000 employees globally, which makes the headcount cut around 5.7 percent of its workforce.

Based on comments by an anonymous employee, it was a small number of job cuts that were initially expected inside the GlobalFoundries. It's possible that contractors will be the ones being sacrificed in the first place, as the company has no less than 800 contractors just at its headquarters in Vermont, plus another 2,000 full time employees. GlobalFoundries has fabs in Vermont, New York, Singapore and Germany, but based on the comments by the employee, it's most likely that the major job cuts will take place in the US and Singapore, due to Germany's stricter employment laws. The job cuts are expected to start taking place this month.

Here is the first picture of a next-generation AMD EPYC "Genoa" processor with its integrated heatspreader (IHS) removed. This is also possibly the first picture of a "Zen 4" CPU Complex Die (CCD). The picture reveals as many as twelve CCDs, and a large sIOD silicon. The "Zen 4" CCDs, built on the TSMC N5 (5 nm EUV) process, look visibly similar in size to the "Zen 3" CCDs built on the N7 (7 nm) process, which means the CCD's transistor count could be significantly higher, given the transistor-density gained from the 5 nm node. Besides more number-crunching machinery on the CPU core, we're hearing that AMD will increase cache sizes, particularly the dedicated L2 cache size, which is expected to be 1 MB per core, doubling from the previous generations of the "Zen" microarchitecture.

Each "Zen 4" CCD is reported to be about 8 mm² smaller in die-area than the "Zen 3" CCD, or about 10% smaller. What's interesting, though, is that the sIOD (server I/O die) is smaller in size, too, estimated to measure 397 mm², compared to the 416 mm² of the "Rome" and "Milan" sIOD. This is good reason to believe that AMD has switched over to a newer foundry process, such as the TSMC N7 (7 nm), to build the sIOD. The current-gen sIOD is built on Global Foundries 12LPP (12 nm). Supporting this theory is the fact that the "Genoa" sIOD has a 50% wider memory I/O (12-channel DDR5), 50% more IFOP ports (Infinity Fabric over package) to interconnect with the CCDs, and the mere fact that PCI-Express 5.0 and DDR5 switching fabric and SerDes (serializer/deserializers), may have higher TDP; which together compel AMD to use a smaller node such as 7 nm, for the sIOD. AMD is expected to debut the EPYC "Genoa" enterprise processors in the second half of 2022.

Ansys announced it is collaborating with GF to deliver innovative, unique, and feature-rich solutions to solve some of the biggest challenges facing data centers today. With data being generated at a record pace, causing a surge of power consumption in data centers globally, there is an ever-increasing need for innovative solutions to accelerate data transmission while optimizing energy efficiency. To meet such rising demands, GF is focused on developing groundbreaking semiconductor solutions that leverage the potential of photons—instead of electrons—to transfer and move data, maintaining GF's position as a leader in the rapidly growing optical networking space.

GF Fotonix is GF's next generation, widely disruptive, monolithic platform. GF Fotonix is the first in the industry to combine its differentiated 300 mm photonics and RF-CMOS features on a silicon wafer, delivering best-in-class performance at scale. "Our engagement with Ansys is another example of how GF is partnering with the ecosystem leaders to deliver innovative, time to market solutions for our customers," said Mike Cadigan, senior vice president for Customer Design Enablement, GF. "By coupling GF Fotonix with Ansys' industry-leading simulation solutions, we are reaching new levels in photonic chip design. With support for Verilog-A simulation and process-enabled custom design, designers have greater modeling capabilities to meet their performance, power, and density requirements."

AMD in its 8-K filing with the SEC, disclosed that it has updated its wafer supply agreement (WSA) with GlobalFoundries. Under the latest agreement, AMD commits to buy $2.1 billion worth wafers from GlobalFoundries between 2022 and 2025. The previous version of the WSA saw commitments up to 2024, and wafers worth $1.6 billion. The update hence adds another year and $500 million worth supply.

AMD currently sources 12 nm and 14 nm wafers from GlobalFoundries, which go into making cIOD and sIOD components in its processors, and motherboard chipsets. The move to extend the WSA indicates that the company may continue to use 12 nm-class I/O dies in its processors for the foreseeable future. It will be very interesting to see if 12 nm-class I/O dies make it to next-generation products such as "Genoa" and "Rapael," which integrate the latest IP blocks such as PCI-Express Gen 5 root-complexes, DDR5 memory controllers, and 3rd Gen Infinity Fabric. Processors with 12 nm I/O dies, such as "Milan" and "Vermeer" could be retired only by 2023-24, as AMD will use 2022 to spread across its next-gen product launches.

GlobalFoundries (GF ), a global leader in feature-rich semiconductor manufacturing, today announced the commencement of its initial public offering of 55,000,000 ordinary shares, 33,000,000 of which are being offered by GF and 22,000,000 of which are being offered by GF's existing shareholder, Mubadala Investment Company PJSC, pursuant to a registration statement on Form F-1 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The initial public offering price is currently expected to be between $42.00 and $47.00 per share. In connection with the offering, Mubadala expects to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 8,250,000 ordinary shares at the public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. GF has applied to list its ordinary shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol "GFS."

Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Credit Suisse are acting as active book-running managers for the proposed offering. Deutsche Bank Securities, HSBC and Jefferies are acting as additional book-running managers for the proposed offering. Baird, Cowen, Needham & Company, Raymond James, Wedbush Securities, Drexel Hamilton, Siebert Williams Shank and IMI - Intesa Sanpaolo are acting as co-managers for the proposed offering.

TSMC, as part of its strategy to build cutting-edge semiconductor foundries in the US and EU, is looking to build a ground-up fab in Germany. The company's chairman, Mark Liu, made an announcement to this effect in the company's annual general meeting (AGM), addressing shareholders, held on July 26. This move is still in its "early stages," according to a DigiTimes report, with the company prospecting a suitable site across the country. The size and scale of TSMC's investment remains under the wraps.

TSMC's expedition to Germany aligns with an ambitious plan by the European Commission to make the EU a net-exporter of semiconductors and electronics by 2030. TSMC will have Intel Foundry Services for company in Germany, as an acquisition of Global Foundries would put Intel in control of its real-estate in Dresden. Intel is still prospecting the EU for a suitable place to invest €20 billion, besides ongoing investments in states such as the Republic of Ireland.

GlobalFoundries (GF), the global leader in feature-rich semiconductor manufacturing, today announced its expansion plans for its most advanced manufacturing facility in upstate New York over the coming years. These plans include immediate investments to address the global chip shortage at its existing Fab 8 facility as well as construction of a new fab on the same campus that will double the site's capacity.

The announcement was made as the company convened leaders from government and industry to progress the national discussion around solving U.S. semiconductor supply chain challenges. CEO Tom Caulfield was joined by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo, former Pentagon officials, and executives from leading companies throughout the semiconductor supply chain.

GF will invest $1 billion to immediately add an additional 150,000 wafers per year within its existing fab to help address the global chip shortage. Following that, GF plans to construct a new fab that will create more than 1,000 new direct high-tech jobs and thousands more indirect jobs including high-paying construction jobs for the region. Following the successful investment model of Fab 8, GF is planning to fund the new facility through private-public partnerships including customers, federal and state investments. This new capacity will serve the growing demand for secure, feature-rich chips needed by high-growth markets including automotive, 5G connectivity and the Internet of Things. The facility will also support national security requirements for a secure supply chain.

Intel is exploring a deal to purchase GlobalFoundries for roughly $30 billion according to people familiar with the matter, which would serve as Intel's largest acquisition to date. GlobalFoundries is owned by Mubadala Investment Co and it was widely reported that the company was planning an initial public offering later this year. This latest report comes as Intel continues talks with RISC-V chip designer SiFive for a $2 billion purchase as part of a major restructuring effort led by new CEO Pat Gelsinger. Intel is planning to boost its manufacturing capacity with the IDM 2.0 initiative where they have already committed to building two new fabs in Arizona and will offer manufacturing services to other countries. GlobalFoundries currently holds about 7% of the global foundry market by revenue and has several large customers including AMD, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA.

AMD in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revealed that its wafer supply agreement with GlobalFoundries has been amended. Under the new terms, AMD places orders for wafers from GlobalFoundries up to 2024, with purchase targets set for each year leading up to 2024. Beyond meeting these targets, AMD is free from all other exclusivity commitments. The agreement was previously amended in January 2019, setting annual purchase targets for 2019, 2020, and 2021, while beginning a de-coupling between AMD and GlobalFoundries. This enabled the company to source 7 nm (or smaller) chips, such as CCDs and GPUs, from other foundries, such as TSMC, while keeping GlobalFoundries exclusive for 12 nm (or larger) nodes.

The updated wafer supply agreement unlocks many possibilities for AMD. For starters, it can finally build a next-generation sIOD (server I/O die) on a more efficient node than GlobalFoundries 12LP, such as TSMC 7 nm. This transition to 7 nm will be needed as the next-gen "Genoa" EPYC processor could feature future I/O standards such as DDR5 memory and PCI-Express Gen 5, and the switching fabric for these could be too power-hungry on 12 nm. The "Zen 4" CPU core complex dies (CCDs) of "Genoa" are expected to be built on TSMC 5 nm.

Industry specialists with various analysis groups have stated that they expect the world's current chip supply shortages to not only fail to be mitigated in the first half of 2021, but that they might actually last well into 2022. It's not just a matter of existing chip supply being diverted by scalpers, miners, or other secondary-market funnels; it's a matter of fundamental lack of resources and production capacity to meet demand throughout various quadrants of the semiconductor industry. With the increased demand due to COVID-19 and the overall increasingly complex design of modern chips - and increased abundance of individual chips within the same products - foundries aren't being able to scale their capacity to meet growing demand.

As we know, the timeframe between start and finish of a given semiconductor chip can sometimes take months. And foundries have had to extend their lead times (the time between a client placing an order and that order being fulfilled) already. This happens as a way to better plan out their capacity allocation, and due to the increased complexity of installing, testing, and putting to production increasingly complex chip designs and fabrication technologies. And analysts with J.P. Morgan and Susquehanna that are in touch with the pulse of the semiconductor industry say that current demand levels are 10% to 30% higher than those that can be satisfied by the fabrication and supply subsystems for fulfilling that demand.

It's been doing the rounds in the rumor mill that AMD is looking to expand its semiconductor manufacturing partners beyond TSMC (for the 7 nm process and eventually 5 nm) and Global Foundries (12 nm process used in its I/O dies). The intention undoubtedly comes from the strain that's being placed on TSMC's production lines, as most foundry-less businesses outsource their wafer production to the Taiwanese companies' factories and manufacturing processes, which are currently the industry's best. However, as we've seen, TSMC is having a hard time scaling its production facilities to the unprecedented demand it's seeing from its consumers. The company also has recently announced it may prioritize new manufacturing capabilities for the automotive industry, which is also facing shortages in chips - and that certainly doesn't instill confidence in capacity increases for its non-automotive clients.

That's what originated form the rumor mill. Speculating, this could mean that AMD would be looking to outsource products with generally lower ASP to Samsung's foundries, instead of trying to cram even more silicon manufacturing onto TSMC's 7 nm process (where it already fabricates its Zen 3, RDNA 2, EPYC, and custom silicon solutions for latest-gen consoles). AMD might thus be planning on leveraging Samsung's 8 nm or even smaller fabrication processes as alternatives for, for example, lower-than-high-end graphics solutions and other product lines (such as APUs and FPGA production, should its acquisition of Xilinx come through).

Semiconductor foundries across the board are preparing to raise price quotes of their 8-inch wafers from 2021. A DigiTimes report sheds light on various foundry companies, including UMC (United Microelectronics), Global Foundries, and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) have raised their 8-inch foundry quotes by 10-15% in Q4-2020, with the quotes set to rise by another 20-40% in 2021. Foundries don't tend to use flat pricing, and instead rely on quotes specific to the size and design requirements of an order (by a fabless chip designer).

The foundry industry operates broadly on silicon fabrication nodes and wafer sizes. This article by Telescope Magazine provides insights into the typical use-cases for each wafer size. Although pertaining strictly to pricing of 8-inch (200 mm) wafers, an impending price-rise across the semiconductor industry can be extrapolated on the basis on significant labor cost increases. TSMC is planning to implement a 20% pay hike for its personnel in 2021.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ) today announced the release and distribution of OpenAccess iPDK libraries optimized for its 22FDX (22nm FD-SOI) platform. With its best-in-class performance, power consumption, and broad feature integration capability, GF's differentiated 22FDX platform is the solution of choice for designers and innovators working in 5G mmWave, edge AI, Internet of Things (IoT), automotive, satellite communications, security, and other applications.

The open-standard based iPDK offers the same level of functionality and performance as PDKs designed for specific vendor tools, while helping enable interoperability and compatibility among different design tool suites. Tools including: the Custom Compiler solution from Synopsys; TannerTM software solutions from Mentor, a Siemens business; PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS) from Keysight Technologies; and any other tool supporting OpenAccess will now be able to use GF iPDK libraries for its 22FDX platform. GF's iPDK will consist of OpenAccess technology files, symbols, component description format (CDF), TCL callbacks, netlisting information, and PyCells.

The 22FDX iPDK is released and available alongside other EDA-specific 22FDX PDK bundles.

With its own silicon fabrication facilities pushed to their capacity limits, Intel is looking for third-party semiconductor foundries to share some of its supply load, and according to a WCCFTech report, its latest partner could be GlobalFoundries, which has a 14 nm-class fab in Upstate New York. If it goes through, the possible Intel-GloFo deal could see contract manufacturing commence within 2020.

GloFo's fab offers 14 nm FinFET and 12LPP, a refinement that's marketed as 12 nm. According to the report, Intel could use GloFo for manufacturing CPU dies, specifically its entry-level chips such as Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron. Intel is also known to shed its own manufacturing workload by contracting foundries for 14 nm core-logic (chipsets). In a bid to maximize 14 nm fab allocation for its CPUs, Intel also started making some of its 300-series chipsets on the older 22 nm process, which goes to show the company's appetite for 14 nm.