Breaking the ice
Semiconductor manufacturing company GlobalFoundries has unveiled its first new customer since being spun-off from AMD.
STMicroelectronics is the world's fifth largest semiconductor company. It designs processors for use in a wide variety of embedded applications, including computing and consumer electronics, but its biggest single market is communications.
GlobalFoundries will produce products based on 40nm low power (LP) bulk silicon technology for STMicroelectronics, starting next year. The LP process is designed to produce the kind of low-power chips you would find in mobile phones and set-top boxes.
"We look forward to harnessing our full capabilities for ST to provide best-in-class service in bringing their 40nm design innovation to life in high volumes and at mature yields." said Doug Grose, CEO of GlobalFoundries.
Jean-Marc Chery, EVP and CTO of STMicroelectronics, added: "With a strong commitment to manufacturing and technology excellence at the leading-edge, we believe GlobalFoundries is an excellent partner to collaborate on low-power design innovation in 2010 and beyond."
STMicroelectronics is an intriguing first customer for GlobalFoundries as it created flash memory company Numonyx in partnership with Intel last year. As the first non-AMD customer it will, to some extent, be a guinea pig. Manufacturing will initially be done at the existing Dresden fab, but may eventually switch to Fab 2, which is expected to be up and running by 2012.
But at the same time STMicroelectronics is likely to receive lavish attention from GlobalFoundries, as other semiconductor companies, which currently use more established foundries like TSMC, observe its experience to gauge what they can expect if they decide to take the plunge.
