Monday, October 20th 2014
GLOBALFOUNDRIES To Acquire IBM's Microelectronics Business
IBM and GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that they have signed a Definitive Agreement under which GLOBALFOUNDRIES plans to acquire IBM's global commercial semiconductor technology business, including intellectual property, world-class technologists and technologies related to IBM Microelectronics, subject to completion of applicable regulatory reviews. GLOBALFOUNDRIES will also become IBM's exclusive server processor semiconductor technology provider for 22 nanometer (nm), 14 nm and 10 nm semiconductors for the next 10 years.
The Agreement, once closed, enables IBM to further focus on fundamental semiconductor research and the development of future cloud, mobile, big data analytics, and secure transaction-optimized systems. IBM continues its previously announced $3 billion investment over five years for semiconductor technology research to lead in the next generation of computing. GLOBALFOUNDRIES will have primary access to the research that results from this investment through joint collaboration at the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), SUNY Polytechnic Institute, in Albany, N.Y.
As part of this Agreement, GLOBALFOUNDRIES will gain substantial intellectual property including thousands of patents, making GLOBALFOUNDRIES the holder of one of the largest semiconductor patent portfolios in the world. GLOBALFOUNDRIES also will benefit from an influx of one of the best technical teams in the semiconductor industry, which will solidify its path to advanced process geometries at 10 nm and below. Additionally, the acquisition opens up business opportunities in industry-leading radio frequency (RF) and specialty technologies and ASIC design capabilities.
"This acquisition solidifies GLOBALFOUNDRIES' leadership position in semiconductor technology development and manufacturing," said Dr. Sanjay Jha, CEO, GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "We can now offer our customers a broader range of differentiated leading-edge 3D transistor and RF technologies, and we will also improve our design ecosystem to accelerate time-to-revenue for our customers. This acquisition further strengthens advanced manufacturing in the United States, and builds on established relationships in New York and Vermont."
"The Agreement expands our longstanding collaboration, which began when GLOBALFOUNDRIES was created in 2009, and reflects our confidence in GLOBALFOUNDRIES' capability," said IBM Senior Vice President & Director of Research Dr. John E. Kelly III. "This acquisition enables IBM to focus on fundamental semiconductor and material science research, development capabilities and expertise in high-value systems, with GLOBALFOUNDRIES' leadership in advanced technology manufacturing at scale and commitment to delivering future semiconductor technologies. We are grateful for the leadership and investments by the states of New York and Vermont in supporting the semiconductor industry."
This acquisition bolsters semiconductor manufacturing and technology development in the United States. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has robust capital expenditure plans of approximately $10 billion in 2014-2015, with the majority being invested in New York. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has created nearly 3,000 direct jobs in New York and thousands more indirect jobs in the United States since 2009.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES will acquire and operate existing IBM semiconductor manufacturing operations and facilities in East Fishkill, New York and Essex Junction, Vermont, adding capacity to serve its customers and thousands of jobs to GLOBALFOUNDRIES' workforce. GLOBALFOUNDRIES plans to provide employment opportunities for substantially all IBM employees at the two facilities who are part of the transferred businesses, except for a team of semiconductor server group employees who will remain with IBM. After the close of this transaction, GLOBALFOUNDRIES will be the largest semiconductor technology manufacturing employer in the Northeast.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES will also acquire IBM's commercial microelectronics business, which includes ASIC and specialty foundry, manufacturing and related operations and sales. GLOBALFOUNDRIES plans to invest to grow these businesses.
IBM will reflect a pre-tax charge of $4.7 billion in its financial results for the third quarter of 2014, which includes an asset impairment, estimated costs to sell the IBM microelectronics business, and cash consideration to GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Cash consideration of $1.5 billion is expected to be paid to GLOBALFOUNDRIES by IBM over the next three years. The cash consideration will be adjusted by the amount of working capital which is estimated to be $200 million.
The transaction is subject to the satisfaction of regulatory requirements and customary closing conditions.
The Agreement, once closed, enables IBM to further focus on fundamental semiconductor research and the development of future cloud, mobile, big data analytics, and secure transaction-optimized systems. IBM continues its previously announced $3 billion investment over five years for semiconductor technology research to lead in the next generation of computing. GLOBALFOUNDRIES will have primary access to the research that results from this investment through joint collaboration at the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), SUNY Polytechnic Institute, in Albany, N.Y.
As part of this Agreement, GLOBALFOUNDRIES will gain substantial intellectual property including thousands of patents, making GLOBALFOUNDRIES the holder of one of the largest semiconductor patent portfolios in the world. GLOBALFOUNDRIES also will benefit from an influx of one of the best technical teams in the semiconductor industry, which will solidify its path to advanced process geometries at 10 nm and below. Additionally, the acquisition opens up business opportunities in industry-leading radio frequency (RF) and specialty technologies and ASIC design capabilities.
"This acquisition solidifies GLOBALFOUNDRIES' leadership position in semiconductor technology development and manufacturing," said Dr. Sanjay Jha, CEO, GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "We can now offer our customers a broader range of differentiated leading-edge 3D transistor and RF technologies, and we will also improve our design ecosystem to accelerate time-to-revenue for our customers. This acquisition further strengthens advanced manufacturing in the United States, and builds on established relationships in New York and Vermont."
"The Agreement expands our longstanding collaboration, which began when GLOBALFOUNDRIES was created in 2009, and reflects our confidence in GLOBALFOUNDRIES' capability," said IBM Senior Vice President & Director of Research Dr. John E. Kelly III. "This acquisition enables IBM to focus on fundamental semiconductor and material science research, development capabilities and expertise in high-value systems, with GLOBALFOUNDRIES' leadership in advanced technology manufacturing at scale and commitment to delivering future semiconductor technologies. We are grateful for the leadership and investments by the states of New York and Vermont in supporting the semiconductor industry."
This acquisition bolsters semiconductor manufacturing and technology development in the United States. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has robust capital expenditure plans of approximately $10 billion in 2014-2015, with the majority being invested in New York. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has created nearly 3,000 direct jobs in New York and thousands more indirect jobs in the United States since 2009.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES will acquire and operate existing IBM semiconductor manufacturing operations and facilities in East Fishkill, New York and Essex Junction, Vermont, adding capacity to serve its customers and thousands of jobs to GLOBALFOUNDRIES' workforce. GLOBALFOUNDRIES plans to provide employment opportunities for substantially all IBM employees at the two facilities who are part of the transferred businesses, except for a team of semiconductor server group employees who will remain with IBM. After the close of this transaction, GLOBALFOUNDRIES will be the largest semiconductor technology manufacturing employer in the Northeast.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES will also acquire IBM's commercial microelectronics business, which includes ASIC and specialty foundry, manufacturing and related operations and sales. GLOBALFOUNDRIES plans to invest to grow these businesses.
IBM will reflect a pre-tax charge of $4.7 billion in its financial results for the third quarter of 2014, which includes an asset impairment, estimated costs to sell the IBM microelectronics business, and cash consideration to GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Cash consideration of $1.5 billion is expected to be paid to GLOBALFOUNDRIES by IBM over the next three years. The cash consideration will be adjusted by the amount of working capital which is estimated to be $200 million.
The transaction is subject to the satisfaction of regulatory requirements and customary closing conditions.
23 Comments on GLOBALFOUNDRIES To Acquire IBM's Microelectronics Business
"IBM has agreed to pay the Abu Dhabi-owned firm GlobalFoundries $1.5bn (£930m) to take its unprofitable chip-making business off its hands,"
SOURCE
No reason why regulators would stop it.
I don't think it has as much to do with capacity as it does with revenue. GloFo probably wants more customers, more engineers, more money circulating, and just overall more weight. They want to surpass TSMC who is edging them out in manufacturing capabilities and absorbing the IBM Manufacturing divisions gives them a lot more resources--keep in mind a lot of IP also changed hands.
TSMC's own capacity bears this out. Fab 15 and 12A/12B both use 28nm and 20nm, while Fab 14A / 14B are 28nm. Admittedly the older process nodes (90nm, 65nm) have already recouped their ROI many times over, but their profit margins are also impacted by the low ASP's associated with commodity chips including a lot of Static RAM products.
Their lifespan like all fabs comes down to the litho tools. They would be originally validated for certain nodes, and could/would be further qualified for smaller processes up to a point. If it were a simple case of revalidating existing tooling in perpetuity we wouldn't be at the present bottleneck where the next generation of process wafer lines are limited by the ability to produce tooling (ASML's current NXE:3300B and next-gen NXE:3350B for example) Agreed. GloFo are looking to the future but I don't think they'll overhaul TSMC in any near/medium future - even maxing out the combined capacity doesn't put them in the same ballpark as TSMC. IBM has been shopping its foundry business for a while (and TSMC are on record as saying they weren't interested). If IBM's IP and foundries represented such a threat it would be almost certain that TSMC would have acquired them just to consolidate its own position even if it leased out production to the current leasers (like Sernam) at break-even/loss (tax incentives included) just to tie up the IP.