Development of AI Will Bring Precious Opportunities to Wafer Factories, GlobalFoundries CEO Says
Qian Tongxin
DATE:  Jul 07 2017
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
Development of AI Will Bring Precious Opportunities to Wafer Factories, GlobalFoundries CEO Says Development of AI Will Bring Precious Opportunities to Wafer Factories, GlobalFoundries CEO Says

(Yicai Global) July 7 -- The next ten years will be a golden period for the advancement GlobalFoundries Inc. because its wafer factories make basic architecture technologies used for artificial intelligence applications, said Sanjay Jha, the firm's chief executive.

GlobalFoundries' offerings satisfy AI's requirements for products that support connectivity, lower consumption, and promote 'intelligence,' Jha said.

"The development of artificial intelligence will bring precious opportunities to wafer factories," said Jha.

GlobalFoundries was ranked as the world's second largest wafer foundry with an 11-percent market share and revenue of USD5.5 billion last year, per IC Insights data. It was second only to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. [TPE:2330], whose revenue was up to USD30 billion.

In February this year, GlobalFoundries announced its decision to invest USD10 billion to build China's first wafer factory in Chengdu City in the country's western Sichuan province to meet demand for computer chips created by the Internet of Things.

The project's phase I has commenced, sources said. The 12-inch wafer production line is set to be completed in the first half of next year, with mass production starting in the second half, they said. Monthly capacity is expected to be 20,000 chips. Phase II, which will introduce German technologies, will likely be put into operation in 2019 with a predicted capacity of 65,000 chips per month.

"In the next half decade, 70 percent of our growth will come from chips for the Internet of Things," said Jha.

"Several years ago, China had no chip makers ranked in the global top 10," Jha said. "[China] has two or three [major] chip companies now. So, we will invest more in research and development in the country. Also, our customers in fields like AI, Internet of Things and autonomous driving are all in China."

"The phase I of GlobalFoundries's project in Chengdu is basically a transfer of its production line in Singapore to this city," said Gartner Inc. analyst Sheng Linghai. "Therefore, the Chengdu government is paying more attention to the 22-nanometer Fully Depleted Silicon on Insulator project in phase II."

Sheng does not expect a significant market for this technology. GlobalFoundries hopes to gain market share via China's funds and demand with this move, but while FD-SOI technology is efficient, it is not yet mainstream, Sheng said.

GlobalFoundries shareholders are trying to offload their mess to Chinese investors, an insider said. "SOI is the final ace in the hole for GlobalFoundries, so they have to sugar up it," said a source at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.

"The gradual fading of the border between hardware and software offers opportunities for innovation," Jha said. "For instance, during the advancement of AI, technologies like the convolutional neural network and the deep-learning network that do not exist before will be applied, bringing changes to chip architecture. Traditional semiconductor makers should strive to satisfy new demands created by science and technologies."

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Keywords:   AI,Internet of Things,Computer Chips,Global Foundries,Chengdu