GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s No. 3 contract chipmaker, yesterday said it has as many as 35 customers designing chips using its cutting-edge 28-nanometer (nm) process technology, paving the way for an early shipment in the first quarter of next year.
GlobalFoundries, created out of the chip manufacturing operations of Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Singapore-based Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd (特許), said most of its customers are expected to ship their products made on 28nm technology next year.
This means Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) will maintain its leadership in the intensifying race to offer advanced technologies to make small and low-power-consumption chips suitable for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet devices, as the Hsinchu-based company said 89 of its customers were in the final stage of the current chip design cycle before they begin manufacturing using 28nm technology.
TSMC is expected to start small volume production on 28nm technology in the final quarter of this year, during which the advanced technology would account for 1 percent of its total revenues. The massive production was rescheduled for the first quarter of next year, slightly behind the originally scheduled second half of this year, as customer demand dropped amid global economic weakness.
“Demand for leading-edge [technologies] is still high. We don’t see change there. We saw some softness in mainstream [technologies] like our competitors have said,” GlobalFoundries chief executive Ajit Manocha said.
Manocha said the company has shipped tens of thousand chips using gate-first 32nm technology from its factory in Dresden, Germany, since last year, which made up a significant portion of its revenues.
The Silicon Valley-based GlobalFoundries, which is owned by an investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government, said it would keep its capital spending unchanged at US$5.4 billion, mostly to expand its capacities in the Dresden factory and for a new plant in New York.
The utilization rate on mainstream, or less advanced technologies such as 65nm technology, are expected to drop by 10 to 15 percent in the second half of this year from the first half, the chipmaker said.
GlobalFoundries is a new player, targeting the world’s two biggest contract chipmakers TSMC and United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) to expand market share.
Last year, GlobalFoundries won 12.4 percent of the market share, just behind UMC, which had a 13.5 percent, while TSMC had 47.1 percent, according to market researcher Gartner Inc’s statistics.
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