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
The problem with 7nm is not just the yields, but the yields in combination with the slow patterning on the DUV process. Even with more transistors per wafer, the production speed of first generation 7nm is so slow that it becomes too costly.
The big elephant in the room is EUV, this is supposed to be the key to 7nm's success. We don't know for sure if EUV will be ready anytime soon, so we might be looking at either a slower 7nm adoption phase, or limited quantities for a long time.I assume it will mainly impact the mid- to lower end products. Even if GF didn't give up 7nm, TSMC would still be the only one shipping at 7nm through most of 2019. And as I've mentioned before, even if we're optimistic, the shipping volume of 7nm in the first half of 2019 will be very limited. GF was supposed to ship several quarters later than TSMC anyway, so it will most likely slow down the transition period rather than delay the first Zen 2 products.
There are a couple of things I would like to know, like how many production lines does TSMC have for 7nm compared to 16/12nm, and how much of this is reserved for Nvidia.I thought they already were just licensing Samsung's technology (14nm FF).
I think you don't realize what the game here is.
AMD is an underdog with highly limited resources. As game theory goes, its only chances are GAMBLING.
Focus resources on a single thing (as you don't have money for more than one) and pray to Cthulhu for it to succeed.
Vega, HBM, HBM2, 7nm, you name it.
We were told they bet on 7nm, we were told GF sucks as much or even more than most suspected.
I wish I knew what release of 7nm Vega actually means in terms of fab process maturity.
But TSMC hasn't been the only one cheating, Samsung's 10 nm is actually 14 nm according to the official specs, and Samsung's 14 nm is actually more similar to its 20 nm than the official 16/14 nm spec too. I feel so stupid for not knowing all these before, I really believed that each process node was the same for every foundry.
Sources: en.wikichip.org/wiki/WikiChip Nodes 22 nm to 7 nm
www.semiconductors.org/clientuploads/Research_Technology/ITRS/2015/0_2015 ITRS 2.0 Executive Report (1).pdf pages 38, 48
The important factor is how much improvement we see from a given foundry's node to their next node, what they call it is less important.
TSMC's "7nm" will be a substantial improvement from their current "12nm". We will see how the end products perform and that will be the real metric.