The world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, GlobalFoundries Inc, yesterday opened a US$4 billion manufacturing plant in Singapore as part of a global expansion to help ease an industry supply crunch.
The facility would produce an additional 450,000 wafers annually at full capacity by 2025 to 2026, GlobalFoundries Singapore senior vice president and general manager Tan Yew Kong (陳耀光) told reporters, raising the city-state’s overall capacity to 1.5 million wafers per year.
The chips, usually used in smartphones and other mobile devices, are also increasingly in demand by automakers, especially for electric vehicles, adding to pressure to raise production.
Photo: AFP
“The key megatrends of our industry — digitalization, connectivity, cloud computing — are all driving acceleration to a more connected and data-centric world,” GlobalFoundries president and CEO Thomas Caulfield said at the launch.
“It demonstrates how central and critical the industry is to the world economy, and how pervasive semiconductors are in enabling and enhancing all aspects of human life,” he said.
Despite economic headwinds, the company expects the industry to double in the next decade, Caulfield said, adding: “The catalyst for this growth will be AI [artificial intelligence].”
The firm’s 23,000m2 Singapore facility, which broke ground in 2021, would boost the global footprint of the company, which already has plants in the US and Europe.
Singapore’s chip output makes up 11 percent of the global semiconductor market.
The global semiconductor market is predicted to experience a downturn of 10.3 percent this year, but recover next year and grow 11.8 percent, industry monitor World Semiconductor Trade Statistics has said.
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