14 DAY TRIAL // Globalfoundries recently announced that together with its majority shareholder, the Abu Dhabi controlled Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC), has appointed Ajit Manocha as interim CEO of the company to replace Doug Grose, who will become a senior advisor.
Grose will be soon joined by Chia Song Hwee, chief operating officer, who will remain with the company in that position until August 2011, when he returns to be part of Singapore's business future.
Globalfoundries stated that all of these leadership changes were made in order to meet its customers demand for higher capacity and faster technology development.
Furthermore, the move is also a part of the company's plan to spend $6 billion on technology, talent and manufacturing capacity over the next 18 months.
"Doug Grose and Chia Song Hwee formed the foundation of Globalfoundries, bringing together the world's leading-edge manufacturing technology with the heritage of a full-service foundry partner," said James A. Norling who will now serve as Executive Chairman for the board of directors.
"This new leadership team will build on that foundation, as we increase investment in technology, capacity and talent while optimizing performance," concluded the company's rep.
Ajit Manocha is a veteran semiconductor industry executive with more than 30 years of global expertise in operations, general management, and manufacturing.
Until recently he has served as an advisor for ATIC and was previously Executive Vice President of Worldwide Operations at Spansion as well as Executive Vice President and Chief Manufacturing Officer at NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors).
Norling is the former Chairman of Chartered Semiconductor and also served as interim CEO of that company in 2002.
In addition to these changes, the Vice Chairman of the Globalfoundries board of directors was also replaced with Ibrahim Ajami.
AMD is Globalfoundries' largest customer to date and the Sunnyvale-based company uses this foundry to build its 32nm and 45nm parts, including the upcoming Zambezi FX desktop processor that was recently delayed for an August/September launch.