Global Foundries (GloFo) kicked off its conference here today with a Chinese lion dance and a large exhibition area full of third party vendors.
Jim Kupec, senior VP of sales and marketing said: "We had a lion dance to get everyone in their seats and it marks the beginning of GloFo. We started 18 months ago with investments to fund a pure play foundry mission. 
"We're one of the world's largest foundries with 150 customers with revenues of around $4 billion. We'll double our capacity in the next two years."
He said that GloFo will double capacity over the next two years and triple it over the next four years. 
Doug Grose, CEO of GloFo (pictured), said that the cost associated with staying in the business were escalating. Process R&D is getting extremely expensive and complex. "It takes a partnership with customers to understand their needs." He said there are "daunting challenges" ahead, whether it's new materials, the low power necessity, and packaging and lithography. In 2008, he said, the industry was sitting in a world wide economic meltdown that increased in intensity at the end of 2008.
One of the premises of GloFo was that the evolution away from the IDMs with a handful left standing and the gradual move towards fabless and fab lite ahead.
GloFo says there are no real foundries outside Asia. Customers are nervous about continuity of supply if there's only one place in the world where the technology comes from. GloFo has been able to provide differentiation but it will be in collaboration rather than just going it alone. "We've worked closely with AMD and been able to expand our capability" with the investments Glofo is making on design and capacity.
GloFo delivers or will deliver – we’re not certain from the figures he gave, over 200,000 wafers a month - 50,000 of those are at the Chartered fab in Singapore at 200 nanometres. Dresden will run to 80,000 wafers per month and move to 28 nanometres by the end of the year. The Saratoga County fab - Fab 8 - in New York State will deliver 60,000 wafers a month, with ramp coming in 2012 at 28 nanometres.
Grose said that right behind 32 nanometres is 28 nanometre, the second node to use HKMG technology. In 200 millimetre operations there's a lot of activity because of demand from the market.
GloFo will fab synch with ST Micro for the Common Platform support at 28 nanometres. The Common Platform Allance will bring 32/28 nanometre Gate First HKMG capacity to exceed all other foundries. GloFo has already made many customer engagements for its 28 nanometre technology, he said.
drashek