Anton Shilov is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends. It’s clear from the WSJ story that the deal isn’t a sure thing, and GlobalFoundries outright denied that it was in talks with Intel. But it’s possible Intel’s negotiating with the investment firm that owns GlobalFoundries instead, as the WSJ points out. It’s also intriguing that the Journal doesn’t have a “no comment” from Intel itself — that’s sometimes a canary to indicate a company did comment, just off the record or on deep background. New Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also unveiled a new branch of the company called Intel Foundry Services, to become a major provider of foundry capacity in the US and Europe to serve customers globally. Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insight & Strategies, who watches the chip industry closely, says that snagging GlobalFoundries would certainly make sense for Intel.

While any deal of this nature would have to go through governmental scrutiny, Intel may have something in its favor that would help it gain U.S. and EU approval fast. The U.S. and EU are keenly aware of the processor shortages impacting all industries today and know that China is moving fast to try and fill that void. Although China is behind in creating fabs for high-end computing, my sources tell me that China is buying up every level of computing manufacturing technology they can get their hands on.

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Intel’s history is ripe with supplying processors for microcontrollers, sensors, and other control-level computing chips for use in just about all industries in the past. They eventually tightened their focus on PCs and servers but still provide some mid-level processors to meet various industries’ needs. GlobalFoundries, which is looking at a potential listing later in the year, has two chip factories in Singapore, two 300 millimeter fabs in Germany, and one 200 millimeter fab and two 300 millimeter fabs in the US. GlobalFoundries alleges that IBM has illicitly revealed its proprietary IP and trade secrets that it got after acquiring IBM’s microelectronics division in 2015.

Intel starting foundry capacity may be in exchange for more access to funding for leading edge capability. Should they acquire GlobalFoundries, Inc, they would acquire a company with strong foundations in process technology and equipped to meet the growing need for processors of all types. This may be in Gelsinger’s mind if the goal is to bring Intel back to its glory days as one of the primary suppliers of microprocessors to every industry.

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IBM is currently working with Japan’s Rapidus consortium on the latter’s 2nm fabrication process and with Intel on various semiconductor-related technologies as part of their partnership announced in 2021. Manufacturing technologies currently developed by Intel and Rapidus rely on gate-all-around transistors. This type of transistor has been explored by various researchers at the Albany NanoTech Complex for years.

A Wall Street Journal report that Intel is looking to buy GlobalFoundries has sparked discussions across the industry. But what exactly this would mean, and why now versus a couple years ago, needs some context. Given that this story about Intel’s interest in GlobalFoundries has not been confirmed, I can only speculate why Intel could be interested in an acquisition of this type. Gelsinger also told us that Intel would abandon its outdatedImmersion Lithography fabrication method and commit itself to theExtreme Ultraviolet process favored byTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

You may change your billing preferences at any time in the Customer Center or call Customer Service. You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Customer Service. That makes it clear that I needed to buy them a fab as they just couldn’t afford it. This was a top priority.The likely alternative if they don’t get subsidized is to build overseas or not at all. GlobalFoundries, which is owned by Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co, has a manufacturing footprint across the U.S., Europe and Asia. With the increasing expectations and demands of customers of electronic…

GlobalFoundries was first spun out into its own company following a deal between AMD and an investment firm linked to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to buy the former’s manufacturing arm. AMD was struggling at the time, thanks to pressure from Intel no less, and its CEO had decided that a fabless approach would save it heaps of money in the long-run and deliver a sudden influx of much needed cash into the business right away. Your comments seem to miss the rather valid barrier to entry that leading edge fabs have. There simply won’t be more than a few – the 3 now is likely the number for the foreseeable future. I think that the current actions by Congress are in fact one of the few methods to get this leading edge capacity within the US – even if some is made by TSMC or Samsung.

Possible Intel deal

The introduction of the https://1investing.in/ Personal Computer put IBM’s stamp of approval — at the time, it meant a great deal — on what it had previously dismissed as a toy. That, in turn, created a market for everything from processors and memory to software applications. The PC proved so successful that prices dropped from thousands of dollars per computer to just hundreds, ultimately forcing IBM to sell its PC division to China’s Lenovo in 2005.

Investors seem to like the idea of combining these two companies, with Intel stock up 1.59% as of publication. It’s important to note that this deal is still in the rumor stage and nothing is definitive or final yet. Yet it’s still too early to tell if Intel will gain a foothold in the GPU market with aggressive pricing and bundling strategies. Intel’s expanded capacity might also enable it to manufacture new GPUs at lower prices than Nvidia and AMD — which both outsource their GPU production to Samsung and TSMC. Nvidia probably isn’t too worried about Intel’s GPUs, since it controlled 81% of the discrete GPU market in the first quarter of 2021, according to JPR.

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It would also give Intel a chip manufacturing facility at a time when there are global chip shortages and huge demand for product from every corner, due in part to the pandemic and the impact it has had on the global supply chain. Intel has already indicated it has plans to spend more than $20 billion to build two fabs in Arizona. Adding GlobalFoundries to these plans would give them a broad set of manufacturing capabilities in the coming years if it came to pass, but would also involve a significant investment of tens of billions of dollars to get there. Much to the surprise of IBM, which in June of this year, as the Globalfoundries IPO rumors were gaining steam and as IBM had enough supplies of its Power9 and System z15 processors to meet any future demand, launched a lawsuit against its former chip partner over chip roadmap failures. That lawsuit is a big enough deal that Intel will have to find some way to settle it, but it if can acquire Globalfoundries and possibly gain IBM as a secondary foundry partner, that would be an interesting turn of events. IBM and Intel are already working together on research and development for 7 nanometer and smaller transistor geometries and have both done fundamental research to bring nanosheet transistors to market, which will be an important factor in the coming years.

• GlobalFoundries is expected to reveal its IPO filing in October and go public by the end of the year or early next year, depending on how quickly its application is processed by the U.S.
• Still, next-generation logic technologies include those that rely on gate-all-around , complementary field-effect transistors , and sub-1 nm production nodes.
• GlobalFoundries has been widely reported to be seeking an IPO, but it scuttled its plans last year amidst the turmoil of the pandemic.

If an what is external debt of GlobalFoundries is in the cards, we’re sure to learn more at this event. Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world’s media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers. I was really bummed about gf abandoning producing leading edge wafers. I feel like that was the whole point of the nanotechnology school here in Albany. If they don’t wanna go past 12nm then IBM should be able to develop smaller nodes with anyone.

Those technologies were indeed developed by IBM’s microelectronics division, which GlobalFoundries took over in 2015. GlobalFoundries now asserts that IBM is unfairly gaining potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing income and other benefits by sharing this IP. That’s a lot of chips, but AMD does currently use one GlobalFoundries made chiplet in every Zen 2 or newer processor it makes.

The company is currently pursuing a new strategy to manufacture and sell chips for both Intel and to others under CEO Pat Gelsinger, who came on board in January to turn around the flagging chip maker. Intel’s manufacturing future looked murky under CEO Bob Swan last year. But under Pat Gelsinger, the engineering veteran who replaced Swan earlier this year, it looks much clearer. Intel is doubling down on its internal foundries with a $20 billion investment in its domestic plants, and it will continue expanding with the help of government subsidies in the U.S. and Europe. When it comes to chip foundries, most the value in IP is from working and commercially-tested processes, not things dreamt up and never made reality – any physics grad can do that – because you don’t know how much effort it’ll take to make it work. This is particularly poignant for GloFo, who abandoned leading-edge work and forced IBM to seek alternative partners.

As per media reports, Intel Corp. may soon buy GlobalFoundries Inc. for around $30 billion. This reported deal would support and accelerate the company’s plans to produce more chips for other tech companies. Since assuming command of the company, CEO Pat Gelsinger has been pushing for steps that would consolidate Intel’s position as market leader. In March, the company announced that it would invest $20 billion in building two chip fabrication sites in Arizona, creating a new division that offers chip manufacturing as a service.

Intel’s mistakes, which caused periodic chip shortages, resulted in massive market share losses to AMD over the past few years. But if Intel gobbles up GlobalFoundries, it could accelerate its development of new chips, while its increased scale could help it avoid future chip shortages. Intel could also use that expanded capacity to accelerate the production of its new discrete GPUs to challenge Nvidia and AMD. There are layers upon layers of irony behind this would-be deal, and it dates back decades to some rather famous encounters.

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Last year was a challenging year for many semiconductor makers because of ingredient shortages, labor shortages, and other supply chain issues, and revenues were only $5.7 billion, down from the $6.2 billion it reported in 2017. (Globalfoundries is not a public company, so we do not have complete financials to analyze.) The company is expecting a 10 percent or so increase this year, which should put it over and above those 2017 figures. The relationship between GlobalFoundries and IBM has been rocky in recent years. Among other things, Big Blue has previously sued GF, seeking damages forabruptly stopping the development of leading-edge process technologies in 2018and disrupting IBM’s server CPU plans. On Wednesday GlobalFoundries fought back and accused IBM of handling GlobalFoundries’ IP related to chip manufacturing to Intel and Rapidus as part of its ongoing partnerships with these companies to develop leading-edge chip technologies.

Really The Antitrust Regulators are about as effective in the US currently as a damp squib! So Much ineffective that Presented with the Standard Oil Of Ohio Trust the current US regulators would have done nothing there with that Trust’s many market abuses. Does the World need fewer Pure Play Foundry operators and more consolidation in the Technology Markets.

• Intel ‘s emergence as a microprocessor giant stems in part from the U.S.
• That expansion could impact TSMC’s orders for older chips , which still accounted for 59% of its revenue last year, as well as UMC’s entire business.
• This dramatic shake-up would see it taking on deals to produce chips for other companies, instead of just its own.
• Our mission is to bring about better-informed and more conscious decisions about technology through authoritative, influential, and trustworthy journalism.
• Nowadays, as senior hardware editor at PC Gamer, he spends his days reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industry.

One major amendment to the WSA allowed AMD to procure chips from other foundries for 7nm and beyond, but kept the red team leased to GlobalFoundries for 12/14nm and larger nodes. The sources, who requested anonymity because the deliberations are confidential, cautioned that the chipmaker’s plans were subject to market conditions and that the timing could change. Technology and business issues mean it won’t replace EUV, but photonics, biotech and other markets provide plenty of room for growth. I believe it is the 1969 to 1982 government antitrust lawsuit that is relevant, since it was during this time that the IBM PC was developed, and IBM’s behavior was governed by the ongoing suit.

Acquiring GF would provide specialty processes, such as SiGe and FD-SOI, along with some general 300mm leading-edge capacity that already is up and running, fueled by a variety of foundry customers. After Globalfoundries tore up IBM’s chip roadmap because it did not have the money or time to make 10 nanometer or 7 nanometer manufacturing work, IBM shifted to Samsung as its 7 nanometer foundry partner for its Power10 and System z16 processors. While we presume that the high end Power10 chips are set to come out sometime this fall, we have no idea how tough it might be and if Samsung is any good at making complex server chips, which are different from making memory, flash, and low-end client chips.

Then-CTO Gary Patton described GF’s forthcoming 7nm process as “a very strong shrink off of 14nm.” But in 2018, GF dropped plans for 7nm, focusing instead on its FD-SOI process. A year later, GF CTO Gary Patton left the company and moved to Intel, the last major U.S. microprocessor company to still own a fab. If the U.S. and EU companies are not careful, China could end up someday making the lion’s share of non-high performance computing processors. GlobalFoundries will always be a force to be reckoned with in this area, but an alliance or pure buyout by Intel would assure that together they could beat off any Chinese competition in the nonhigh performance category. Their combined forces could be able to provide CPUs at all levels to global companies who could be leery of using Chinese CPUs and related chips that might include some level of spying or tracking technology. I feel Intel very highly geared to have all these big acquisition plans.

A deal could help Intel ramp up production of chips at a time demand is at its peak and the company is looking to start producing chips for car makers that have struggled to keep operations running due to severe shortages. Globalfoundries has two chip factories in Singapore , two 300 millimeter fabs in Germany, and one 200 millimeter fab and two 300 millimeter fabs in the United States. Not every chip – indeed, by volumes, not most chips – needs to be etched using the most advanced nodes. And the remaining foundries in the world do a pretty good job squeezing every last dollar out of those old fabs, which helps to pay for the new ones and gives a pipeline of customers for those new fabs in the future.