Monday, August 27th 2018
GlobalFoundries Puts its 7 nm Program on Hold Indefinitely
GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced an important step in its transformation, continuing the trajectory launched with the appointment of Tom Caulfield as CEO earlier this year. In line with the strategic direction Caulfield has articulated, GF is reshaping its technology portfolio to intensify its focus on delivering truly differentiated offerings for clients in high-growth markets.
GF is realigning its leading-edge FinFET roadmap to serve the next wave of clients that will adopt the technology in the coming years. The company will shift development resources to make its 14/12nm FinFET platform more relevant to these clients, delivering a range of innovative IP and features including RF, embedded memory, low power and more. To support this transition, GF is putting its 7nm FinFET program on hold indefinitely and restructuring its research and development teams to support its enhanced portfolio initiatives. This will require a workforce reduction, however a significant number of top technologists will be redeployed on 14/12nm FinFET derivatives and other differentiated offerings.
"Demand for semiconductors has never been higher, and clients are asking us to play an ever-increasing role in enabling tomorrow's technology innovations," Caulfield said. "The vast majority of today's fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore's Law. We are shifting our resources and focus by doubling down on our investments in differentiated technologies across our entire portfolio that are most relevant to our clients in growing market segments."
In addition, to better leverage GF's strong heritage and significant investments in ASIC design and IP, the company is establishing its ASIC business as a wholly-owned subsidiary, independent from the foundry business. A relevant ASIC business requires continued access to leading-edge technology. This independent ASIC entity will provide clients with access to alternative foundry options at 7nm and beyond, while allowing the ASIC business to engage with a broader set of clients, especially the growing number of systems companies that need ASIC capabilities and more manufacturing scale than GF can provide alone.
GF is intensifying investment in areas where it has clear differentiation and adds true value for clients, with an emphasis on delivering feature-rich offerings across its portfolio. This includes continued focus on its FDXTM platform, leading RF offerings (including RF SOI and high-performance SiGe), analog/mixed signal, and other technologies designed for a growing number of applications that require low power, real-time connectivity, and on-board intelligence. GF is uniquely positioned to serve this burgeoning market for "connected intelligence," with strong demand in new areas such as autonomous driving, IoT and the global transition to 5G.
"Lifting the burden of investing at the leading edge will allow GF to make more targeted investments in technologies that really matter to the majority of chip designers in fast-growing markets such as RF, IoT, 5G, industrial and automotive," said Samuel Wang, research vice president at Gartner. "While the leading edge gets most of the headlines, fewer customers can afford the transition to 7nm and finer geometries. 14nm and above technologies will continue to be the important demand driver for the foundry business for many years to come. There is significant room for innovation on these nodes to fuel the next wave of technology."
GF is realigning its leading-edge FinFET roadmap to serve the next wave of clients that will adopt the technology in the coming years. The company will shift development resources to make its 14/12nm FinFET platform more relevant to these clients, delivering a range of innovative IP and features including RF, embedded memory, low power and more. To support this transition, GF is putting its 7nm FinFET program on hold indefinitely and restructuring its research and development teams to support its enhanced portfolio initiatives. This will require a workforce reduction, however a significant number of top technologists will be redeployed on 14/12nm FinFET derivatives and other differentiated offerings.
"Demand for semiconductors has never been higher, and clients are asking us to play an ever-increasing role in enabling tomorrow's technology innovations," Caulfield said. "The vast majority of today's fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore's Law. We are shifting our resources and focus by doubling down on our investments in differentiated technologies across our entire portfolio that are most relevant to our clients in growing market segments."
In addition, to better leverage GF's strong heritage and significant investments in ASIC design and IP, the company is establishing its ASIC business as a wholly-owned subsidiary, independent from the foundry business. A relevant ASIC business requires continued access to leading-edge technology. This independent ASIC entity will provide clients with access to alternative foundry options at 7nm and beyond, while allowing the ASIC business to engage with a broader set of clients, especially the growing number of systems companies that need ASIC capabilities and more manufacturing scale than GF can provide alone.
GF is intensifying investment in areas where it has clear differentiation and adds true value for clients, with an emphasis on delivering feature-rich offerings across its portfolio. This includes continued focus on its FDXTM platform, leading RF offerings (including RF SOI and high-performance SiGe), analog/mixed signal, and other technologies designed for a growing number of applications that require low power, real-time connectivity, and on-board intelligence. GF is uniquely positioned to serve this burgeoning market for "connected intelligence," with strong demand in new areas such as autonomous driving, IoT and the global transition to 5G.
"Lifting the burden of investing at the leading edge will allow GF to make more targeted investments in technologies that really matter to the majority of chip designers in fast-growing markets such as RF, IoT, 5G, industrial and automotive," said Samuel Wang, research vice president at Gartner. "While the leading edge gets most of the headlines, fewer customers can afford the transition to 7nm and finer geometries. 14nm and above technologies will continue to be the important demand driver for the foundry business for many years to come. There is significant room for innovation on these nodes to fuel the next wave of technology."
44 Comments on GlobalFoundries Puts its 7 nm Program on Hold Indefinitely
As oxidized said, that leaves only TSMC (maybe) doing 7nm. I wonder if they'll be plagued by the same issues.
And don't get me wrong. I love AMD. I love their 12nm chips and I love the direction they're heading in and the impact they're making on the landscape. I make no qualms about being team red all the way. Though I don't partake in who's better - I go with whatever suits my needs best for the money... I just like AMD more as a company. I'll buy from them when I can get what I need from em.
But I gotta be realistic here. I don't think the battle for 7nm has even begun, yet. Gonna be a long, long time before we see this happen, if ever.
I'm guessing if GloFo can make same clock speed improvement (10%) from refining 14nm (aka 12nm), we will see Ryzen 3k from them. If not, TSMC it is.
But then again the silicon for Rome and Ryzen 3000 is exactly the same, so is it even possible (and financially viable) to have one same chip from two different manufacturers?
A bit like Apple multi-sourcing some of their chips, albeit on a much, much tougher node in AMD's case.
Generally the highest volume parts are the low end stuff, for example the Pentium G line up is extremely popular for OEMs and small PC builders.
The APUs are actually still on 14nm right now and will be moving to 12nm soon.
AMD should have much more bargining power over GF these days,
so they might be able to make GF sell those 12nm wafers for basically nothing and use those for margin bin APUs to compete with Pentiums and Celerons.
By next year the 12nm yields should be close to perfect anyways.
b) Given that AMD is already sampling both Rome and Vega 7nm to customers, it's rather obvious that they're not based on a cancelled node. At least one of them is confirmed to be made by TSMC; it would be very odd if that didn't apply to both.
Now, for what this means for the semiconductor industry, I'm not quite sure, but it definitely has me worried. If the 2nd-largest fab company (outside of vertically integrated units like Intel and Samsung) is throwing in the towel on smaller litographies, that is a very worrying sign. At least Samsung makes their fab services available to others, but still - this is fast approaching monopoly territory. I definitely don't like the direction this is going in.
As for the people saying "Intel is stuck at 10nm, so of course 7nm is even more difficult": these "node sizes" are only marketing names. For example, GF14nm, TSMC 16nm and Intel 22nm are quite comparable in terms of actual transistor density and feature size. Intel 14nm is roughly comparable to the current Samsung/TSMC 10nm processes. TSMC 7nm is reportedly slightly denser than Intel 10nm, but not by much. This does of course not mean that TSMC 7nm is easier to make than Intel 10nm. But it's not more difficult either.
Anandtech has a great write-up on this. Apparently (and their reasoning makes sense, so I don't think the corporate BS bingo sheet applies here) this is purely a business/economic decision, and not due to technical issues with the process node. In short, GF has been losing money for a long time, and while they're close to finishing 7LP, they don't actually have any fabs to produce it in. Fab 8, where they make their 14/12nm products, is running at full capacity and not showing any signs of having to slow down - demand for that is high. Retrofitting it (which would be the cheapest solution) is thus not an option, as they'd lose the ability to sell their in-demand 14/12nm products. As such, they'd either have to build a new fab or expand Fab 8, both of which would cost $10-20 billion, which they don't have, and their owner is unwilling to invest. And even if they did, they'd still have less 7nm fab capacity than Samsung and TSMC, meaning that the amortized cost of R&D (which is comparable across the three) per chip produced would need to be higher - either making them more expensive than the competition, or less profitable. For a company that's lost several billion dollars over the last few years, that's not a good business plan.
This is a crying shame, but it makes sense. Hopefully this would also mean that they'll keep moving on to smaller nodes as time passes, just not fighting to stay at the bleeding edge. If they make money off 14/12nm for a few years, that could go a long way in paying for a 7nm-ish node down the line - and while it wouldn't be bleeding-edge, it'd still be attractive to buyers. Not CPU and GPU manufacturers, though, so us PC enthusiasts wouldn't see much gain. But it's sure better than nothing.
What does this mean for Zen 2 and Navi?
GloFo is screwed.
TL;DR: GloFo is no longer an innovation company, just a production company that will license other company's fab tech.