The FAB that was just inaugurated by Obama is getting a 30% production expansion

Jul 25, 2012 15:11 GMT  ·  By

Although GlobalFoundries’ New York FAB 8 is just starting risk production with volume manufacturing slated for early 2013, the semiconductor company has already started the construction of new production facilities to increase capacity by 30%.

The current facilities and equipment at FAB 8 are capable of processing about 45,000 300mm wafers in a month, and production is projected to reach 60,000 300mm wafers per month in December 2013.

This way, GlobalFoundries reportedly believes it will raise the competitivity level of its FAB 8.

The new facilities that will be built will add about 90,000 square feet or about 8,500 sqm of production facilities and will make Module 1 of Fab 8 measure 300,000 square feet in total, which is about 28,000 sqm.

Construction will begin next month and the total investment value is estimated at $2.3 billion. “During the construction of Fab 8, we extended the shell of the Module 1 building with the expectation that our business would continue to grow. Today we see increasingly strong demand from our customers, especially at the 28nm node, and we are excited to be moving forward with this next phase in the development of the Fab 8 campus,” said Eric Choh, VP and general manager of FAB 8.

The facility will churn out only 28nm chips and later, in 2014 it will start 20nm production along with GlobalFoundries’ FAB 1 in Dresden, Germany.

FAB 1 is currently already manufacturing 28nm micro-processors and will be the FAB to manufacture Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 processors as quickly as possible and AMD’s Jaguar-based APUs in late spring, next year.