Globalfoundries CEO Ajit Manocha has praised his firm
for what he called a "remarkable quarter" in Q411, and
promised that the foundry was on track to "keep the
momentum going," after a year plagued with difficulties and setbacks.
Manocha added that Globalfoundries' new fab in upstate
New York is due to start ramping imminently, with
20-nm expected to be introduced in June. Manocha also
said Globalfoundries' Dresden facility would continue
with 32-nm and 28-nm manufacturing, while plans were
already underway for 14-nm.
These were among the comments the foundry's executive
made during an interview with EE Times.
Manocha also dismissed Globalfoundries' competitor
TSMC and its high-k metal gate technology they use for
their chips, as only having shipped "a few thousand
wafers" with high-k metal gate in 2011," noting that
his firm had shipped well over 700, 000.
However the gate-first HKMG has proved particularly
difficult to ramp and now the company will need to
make another challenging transition as it follows
Intel and TSMC to gate-last HKMG at 20-nm. Manocha
agreed that scaling from 40-nm to 32-nm had indeed
presented a challenge, and that it would be yet
another bridge to cross reversing the metal gate going
from 28-nm to 20-nm, a bigger challenge, he said, would likely come from the photo lithography side of the process and then moving to 450 mm wafers.