by Gary Dagastine

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has made great strides in recent years, evolving from limited use in a small number of applications into an essential enabler of the systems that now pervade our lives.

“Smart” thermostats, doorbells and voice assistants; semi-autonomous vehicles; medical monitoring devices with predictive capabilities; and a myriad of other applications in many fields now rely on AI technology.

But AI and its specialized subsets (machine learning, deep learning and neuromorphic computing) have an Achilles Heel that stands in the way of further progress: a huge and growing energy appetite. As AI computing becomes more demanding and its overall use grows, the amount of energy required for AI computations and data transport is rapidly increasing, leading to excessive use of energy resources and to a significantly increased global carbon footprint.

This growth in energy usage is unsustainable. Consider data centers, which make heavy use of AI. In 2017 they consumed about three percent of all the electrical power in the U.S, but by 2020 that had doubled to six percent, and there’s no end in sight. Industry projections say that by 2041 data centers theoretically would consume the world’s entire energy output if today’s inefficient compute architectures were still in use.

AI’s energy challenge isn’t restricted to data centers. Battery-powered Internet of Things (IoT) devices at the network edge also have large power requirements, in the aggregate. As more AI processing moves to the edge, increasingly sophisticated IoT devices must become much more efficient so that their lithium-ion batteries can power more functions, last longer and/or be made physically smaller. That also would help to reduce the growing volumes of potentially hazardous Li-ion waste from discarded batteries.

GlobalFoundries (GF) has aligned its product roadmap to address the AI energy challenge, by incorporating a series of technical innovations into its 12LP/12LP+ FinFET solution (used in data centers and IoT edge servers) and 22FDX® FD-SOI solution (used at the IoT edge). In addition, GF is working with leading AI researchers to develop new, more efficient computing architectures and algorithms to open up new AI horizons.

A Paradigm Change for AI

An AI system gathers large amounts of either structured or unstructured data and then processes it according to an algorithm written for a given application. The goal is to find relevant correlations and patterns within the data, to make inferences and decisions based on them, and to act on those inferences in a way that satisfies the needs of the application. Intensive computer processing is required, given the size of the data sets and the sophistication of the algorithms.

“At the present time most AI tasks are running in the cloud, but the data sets that are fed into the algorithms in the cloud come in from the outside world, through an analog interface like an IoT device on the edge,” said Ted Letavic, CTO and VP Computing and Wireless Infrastructure (CWI) at GF. “The cloud-based AI paradigm is energy inefficient, as it requires the transport of large amounts of data from the edge of the network (IoT edge) to the datacenter where the computations are performed and results derived, and subsequent transport of the results back to the edge device. Not only is this energy inefficient, the time associated with data transport results in an overall system latency which precludes use for many safety-critical AI applications.”

At first, traditional general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) were used for AI and machine learning. “These were designed for random memory access, which has become problematic given the growing need to reduce the time and energy spent transferring data between processors and memory,” Letavic said. “We need to change the paradigm, and process the data stored within the memory network itself without having to transport it.”

As a result, he said, a fundamental shift in computing architectures is taking place. A “renaissance of design” is occurring towards domain-specific compute architectures which are extremely energy efficient for AI inference (training) tasks which include well-defined dataflow and compute paths. These optimized accelerators resemble memory hierarchies, often referred to as “digital compute-in-memory” or “analog compute-in-memory.” These accelerators perform parallel operations making them ideal for the type of computations at the heart of AI, and at substantially lower total power which enables greater use of AI at the network edge.

4X More Efficient Memory with GF’s 12LP+

To accommodate these changes in architecture, GF has made technology improvements and enabled new design flows.

“In virtually every single AI workload we examined, memory bandwidth and memory access power limited overall capabilities, because a certain number of operations must take place within a fixed power budget, and memory consumed far too much of it,” Letavic said. “So we applied some learnings from our 7nm technology development effort to our 12LP/LP+ technology, and came out with the industry’s first 1 GHz-capable 0.55V SRAM memory macros, which for typical workloads reduce the energy associated with memory access by a factor of four. This solution is targeted at systolic array processors and is directly applicable to AI and machine learning workloads.”

Next, GF looked at the array architectures, Letavic said.

“We found that every single customer had a different dataflow architecture and there was basically no way to select an optimum design,” he said “To address this, we created a novel design flow that synthesizes logic and memory elements together so they can be built in very close proximity with a high degree of flexibility. This design flow breaks the conventional paradigm of logic and memory macro synthesis, and the intermingling of logic and memory elements can be used to implement very novel AI architectures.”

Advances in GF technology, coupled with a new and unique design and synthesis flow, are powerful tools for the implementation of new compute paradigms, Letavic said, and further unlock the promise of AI. Important work in this area is taking place in collaboration with leading research institutions.

Dr. Marian Verhelst and GF’s University Connection

GF is collaborating with some of the world’s leading researchers to study these novel architectures and establish objective benefits and proof points for them, which GF’s customers then could use to design more efficient AI systems.

Much of this work is taking place through collaborations with research consortia such as imec, and with university professors through GF’s University Partnership Program (UPP). Under the program, GF works closely with worldwide academic researchers on innovative projects leveraging GF technology.

One of GF’s leading academic collaborators is Dr. Marian Verhelst, Professor at the KU Leuven university in Leuven, Belgium, and also a research director at Imec. Dr. Verhelst is one of the world’s leading experts in highly efficient processing architectures. She previously worked at Intel Labs in the U.S. on digitally enhanced analog and RF circuits, and came to KU Leuven in 2012 where she started a research lab, which currently has 16 doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers.

Her lab’s work encompasses everything from long-horizon, big-picture projects funded by the European Union, to nearer-term efforts that involve technology transfer to a wide range of industry players. She has been awarded Belgium’s André Mischke YAE Prize, which recognizes internationally leading academic research, management, and evidence-based policy making.

A former member of the Young Academy of Belgium and the Flemish STEM platform, she is an outspoken advocate for science and education, and has been featured on several popular science shows on national television. In 2014, she founded InnovationLab, which develops interactive engineering projects for high school teachers and their students. She also is a member of the IEEE’s Women in Circuits initiative, among many other advocacy and educational activities.

The DIANA Chip – a Significant Step Forward for AI

Dr. Verhelst has led an effort to produce a hybrid neural network chip which is the world’s first chip to not only combine analog compute-in-memory and digital systolic arrays, but which can seamlessly partition the AI algorithm across these heterogenous resources to achieve optimum energy performance, accuracy, and latency.

Called DIANA (DIgital and ANAlog), the chip was built using GF’s 22FDX platform and will be featured in a paper to be delivered later this month at the prestigious 2022 International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

“Machine learning is booming and everyone has a processor optimized for machine learning, but mostly they’ve been designed purely in the digital domain, and they compute using zeros and ones, which isn’t always the most efficient thing you can do,” Verhelst said. “Therefore, many researchers are now investigating computing in the analog domain, even inside SRAM memories, working with current accumulation across SRAM cells instead of with zeroes and ones. That can be much more efficient from an energy point of view, and also from a chip-density point of view because it allows you to do more computing per square millimeter.”

“There have been some excellent results thus far, but only for specific machine learning networks which happen to nicely match the shape of the memories. For others, the algorithms don’t necessarily run efficiently,” she said. “The DIANA chip contains a host processor along with both a digital and an analog-in-memory co-processor. For every layer of a neural network, it can dispatch a given layer to the inference accelerator or co-processor that will operate most efficiently. Everything runs in parallel and intermediate data is efficiently shared among the layers.”

To achieve this, Verhelst’s team developed advanced schedulers and mappers, which analyze a chip’s hardware characteristics to determine either the most energy-optimal or most latency-optimal “order of compute,” or how to run a given algorithm on the chip.

“There are many ways to run an algorithm, depending on how much memory you have, its characteristics, how many compute elements there are in your processing array, and so on,” she said. “So we developed tools into which you can enter the hardware characteristics, and which help to find the optimal solution for your workload.”

An Ongoing Collaboration

The DIANA chip is the latest result of Verhelst’s work with GF, which began about five years ago when GF offered the opportunity for one of her Ph.D. students to tape out a video processing chip on 22FDX technology, which could efficiently carry out hundreds of operations in parallel.

Subsequently, Verhelst worked on GF’s 12 LP+ technology to build a deep-learning chip for a very dense compute fabric, with more than 2,000 multipliers on the chip and large SRAM content. Yet another project that is in initial stages is to use GF’s 22FDX platform to build a heavily duty-cycled machine learning chip with a focus on extremely low-power operation for IoT, machine monitoring or other sensor nodes that must operate on milliwatts of power.

She says that the silicon access and technical partnership which GF provides is invaluable. “Producing working silicon can be very expensive, especially for digital processors which are physically large. Working with GF provides us both a lower barrier to silicon and access to the latest relevant IP,’ she said.

“Also, GF provides us with advice and support for what are sometimes difficult physical design closure jobs, which isn’t necessarily trivial any longer given these advanced technologies. There are so many things you have to take into account in the backend, that GF’s manufacturing experience really helps us when we are trying to ensure things like fast IO, good oscillators, optimum power gating and so on.”

Looking Ahead

When asked what’s next for GF with regard to more energy-efficient AI, Letavic mentioned the company’s work with integrated voltage regulation for the compute die itself, and silicon photonics for even higher levels of transport and compute efficiencies.

“Improved power delivery is a way to compensate for the lack of power scaling at smaller nodes, which has become a real limitation at the systems level,” he said. “One of the key ways to save total application power is just to be more efficient at the way you deliver current and voltage to the processor core. We’re exploring various options, and it could be a very large opportunity for GF given our long heritage in bipolar CMOS and DMOS power devices.”

Letavic also mentioned that photonic acceleration, or using light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons) not only to transmit signals over optical fiber but for computing itself, may come to play a significant role in AI. “I would say this is developing a rate much faster than I had expected. And it’s another place where we have some really solid university engagements.”

Read about other research taking place through’s GF’s University Partnership Program:

• GF Drives Progress in Next-Generation Automotive Radar
• Academic Collaborations Strengthen, Hasten GF’s Path to 6G Leadership
• GF Partners with Leading Researchers on 6G Technologies

By Emma Cheer

February is Black History Month in the U.S. The month-long observance is an opportunity to recognize and pay homage to the contributions, innovations, and trailblazers within the Black community who have elevated business, technology, art, music, science and other fields that impact the lives of people around the world.

GlobalFoundries (GF) knows the best ideas come from a diverse team being inclusive, and that our success rests on empowering employees to bring their whole person — 15,000 employees with unique talents and distinctive qualities — to our company. Building a culture of inclusion drives better business outcomes. A critical driver of diversity at GF is our employee-led Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with GF’s organizational mission, values, and goals.

Established in August 2020, the Black Resource Affinity Group (BRAG) at GF seeks to embrace the diverse experiences of Black employees and provides a safe place to express individualism, while continuing to build upon GF’s inclusive culture. BRAG focuses on promoting the recruitment, retention, and professional advancement of Black employees. BRAG has grown to over 50 members and allies, with hundreds of GF employees in attendance at recent events.

“As an ESG leader for BRAG at GF, I want to foster a network for our Black community and bring attention to the challenges and barriers faced by our Black, Indigenous and People of Color,” said Arleea Hendricks, lead HR business partner at GF and a member of the Fab 8 team in Malta, New York. “Black History Month is a time to commemorate and reflect on the remarkable achievements of African Americans throughout history, as well as an opportunity to increase visibility and have conversations around social injustice and cultural acceptance.”

Through a truly remarkable year for GF, BRAG remained steadfast in supporting its members with networking events, professional development opportunities and outreach efforts beyond GF. Here’s a snapshot of BRAG’s year in review. Developing Black Talent within GF

Providing professional development opportunities is the key to BRAG’s objectives. In September, BRAG hosted a panel on growth, featuring GF leaders across business units and inviting all GF team members to participate in an interactive panel session to gain confidence in their career journey. A main topic of the discussion focused on navigating role changes and exploring career opportunities within GF.

Another top priority for BRAG is creating networking opportunities for its members, through mentorship activities, meet and greets for GF interns, and presentations from diversity and inclusion leaders such as Dereca Blackmon and Dr. Wanda Heading Grant.

GF’s Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Will Billings, who joined the company last year, took on the role of BRAG’s new executive sponsor. With more than two decades of experience in accounting and finance, he brings to GF and BRAG a wealth of experience of working on and leading diverse international teams.

Building Relationships through Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

Last February, BRAG partnered with GF’s corporate and employee giving program, GlobalGives, to showcase Black-run nonprofits, including All Star Code, The Hidden Genius Project, Sad Girls Club and Fighting 4 the Tatas. These nonprofits provide medical and professional support for Black men and women. In addition to the 2021 GlobalGives campaign, BRAG members worked tirelessly to support local school and community events throughout the year.

At GF, one of our core values is “Embrace.” Events like BRAG’s Lunch & Learn series allow for engaging discussions on allyship and inclusion in a trusting environment. These are important for reaffirming this value as we take the time to reflect on what allyship and inclusion mean at GF and how we can continuously improve our company culture.

In April, BRAG collaborated with Malta GlobalWomen to host “Preventing Microaggressions in the Workplace.” Collaboration between ERGs opens opportunities for team members to create connections both within our sites and across the globe.

Partnering for a More Inclusive GF

GF believes that a diversity of ideas and backgrounds makes for a stronger culture of trust and innovation. Partnering with organizations such as The McKinsey Leadership Program, AfroTech, the Jackie Robinson Foundation and more enables GF to grow as a diverse yet united ONEGF.

A group of 22 outstanding GF leaders participated in the McKinsey Black Leadership Academy’s pilot Management Accelerator program. The Management Accelerator program is a 6-month practical “mini-MBA” tailored to the unique experience of Black leaders, building foundational skills for early to mid-career leaders, developing core leadership and management capabilities through a case-based approach. McKinsey Leadership specifically acknowledges the unique skills of Black leaders and the challenges they face.

In November, GF was a proud sponsor of AfroTech, one of the largest conferences for Black tech innovators.

BRAG member and Senior Engineer Marvin Montaque attended the virtual event. “The AfroTech Conference of 2021 was an incredible experience. The ability to meet with industry leaders from well-known companies to companies not even on my radar was amazing,” he said.

“We sometimes forget that there is an engine – people- behind every company with knowledge and experiences that can impact your own world,”’ Montaque continued. “AfroTech 2021 provided a unique opportunity to interact with these folks via the metaverse. This technology blows my mind thinking about it. I was able to take friends on a boat ride (virtually) while catching up and meeting new people. I was also able to hop from event to event across campus in a matter of seconds. The content was also amazing, from attending workshops and pitch competitions, meeting with executives from Disney/Slack and picking their brains on what is to come in their industry, to attending DJ/dance parties from my living room. The whole experience was incredible.”

GF continues to build its partnership with the Jackie Robinson Foundation (JRF). This partnership focuses on advancing higher education opportunities for underrepresented minorities by providing multi-year scholarship awards to highly motivated college students with an interest in STEM. GF hosted two JRF scholars as interns in the summer of 2021.

“This past summer was one of my greatest learning experiences,” said Mbaba Sow, a JRF scholar at GF. “Being at GlobalFoundries in Malta, New York allowed me to take a deep dive into the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Being exposed to the integrated systems that control the semiconductor chip process, and being able to get up from my desk and go see the process live was amazing. My co-workers in my department were very welcoming and were willing to answer any questions that I had for them. By the end of my internship, I felt like I added members to my family.”

GF is proud of BRAG’s accomplishments and looks forward to the next year of excellent programming and learning opportunities. Interested in learning about other Employee Resource Groups at GF? Read our ERG Round-up: Employee Resource Groups Driving Diversity, Inclusion, and Success at GlobalFoundries

GlobalFoundries® (GF®) has never had a year quite like 2021. From major manufacturing expansion announcements, to collaborating with world-leading partners to redefine innovation for automobiles and smartphones, to making our stock market debut, this was a year to remember.

As we prepare to say goodbye to 2021, we have collected the top GF stories of the year.

Setting a Higher Bar for Sustainability

Building upon our longstanding commitment to environmentally responsible manufacturing and operations, this year GF announced the Journey to Zero Carbon initiative. The goal of Journey to Zero Carbon is to reduce GF’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030, as the company expands its global manufacturing capacity. As our CEO Tom Caulfield said:

” … Journey to Zero Carbon is the natural next step for us to take. It’s the right thing do to – for our business, for our global team, and for our planet.”

Along with doubling down on sustainability in our own operations, the semiconductor solutions we manufacture are enabling our partners and customers to achieve their own sustainability and efficiency goals. Our blog post, GF Technologies Enable a More Sustainable, More Efficient World, brings this story to life.

Leaning into Diversity and Inclusion

GF has one of the most diverse workforces of any semiconductor manufacturer, and we know this is a competitive advantage for our company. One of the ways we foster a culture of diversity and inclusion is by creating an environment of trust, and providing a structure that honors what makes us different so we can most effectively collaborate on our shared goals.

Employee Resource Groups, or ERGs, are a critical part of the structure we have in place to empower our team and celebrate the diversity of our workforce. These voluntary, employee-led groups create a space for individuals of a similar interest, culture, or experience to support and connect professionally and personally.

This year GF employees launched three new ERGS: Asian Society for Inclusion and Awareness; Pride at GF; and Unidos. Together with Black Resource Affinity Group (BRAG), GlobalWomen, GlobalFamilies, and other groups, these ERGs connect the GF community, strengthen our team, and help position our company for continued success.

If you missed our blog post on GF’s ERGs, click here to hear from ERG members about their experiences. Be sure to also check out our blog posts on GF’s celebrations of Women’s History Month and Black History Month.

Inaugural GF Technology Summit

Coinciding with GF’s new corporate brand (spoiler alert for no. 5 on this list!) was a new name for our longstanding GTC industry event. The 2021 GF Technology Summit encompassed four global events, and our 750+ attendees from countries around the world joined presentations, keynotes, and panel discussions featuring our incredible partners and customers, GF leaders, and other guests. Click here to view the replays of many of these sessions.

At the event, we announced a portfolio of new features that extend our solutions roadmap and accelerate the next wave of innovation in chip design for smart mobile devices, datacenter, IoT and automotive.

Check out the buzz from the event on Twitter, and don’t miss the series of blog posts that dive deeper into our announcements:

• For auto industry, innovation is GlobalFoundries’ ace in the hole
• GF innovation is moving data at light speed
• GF innovation opens the door to new era of more in smartphones
• Internet of Things reaches historic milestone

Redefining Semiconductor Innovation

GF believes that semiconductor manufacturing innovation is about making chips smarter, not just smaller. We work closely with our customers and partners to develop and manufacture the feature-rich chips that are pervasive throughout people’s lives, and which provide performance vital to many growing markets.

In the words of our CEO Tom Caulfield, we “make the chips in many of your favorite electronics more connected and secure, more intelligent and intuitive, more powerful and power efficient.”

This innovation was on full display in 2021, as we made announcements about how GF chips are helping our customers push the envelope of technology:

• We partnered with Compound Photonics to manufacture the world’s first monolithic microdisplay for real-time augmented reality applications.
• Our partnership with PsiQuantum achieved a world-first manufacturing milestone on the path to delivering a commercially viable quantum computer with one million qubits.
• We also announced a partnership with Raytheon to develop and commercialize a new gallium nitride on silicon semiconductor that will enable game-changing radio frequency performance for 5G and 6G mobile and wireless infrastructure applications.

For a peak into how innovation happens at GF, don’t miss our blog posts featuring a Q&A with GF Master Inventors Yan Ping Shen and Shesh Mani Pandey, as well as blog posts about the research and develop happening in partnership with world-leading academics as part of GF’s University Partnership Program:

• Academic Collaborations Strengthen, Hasten GF’s Path to 6G Leadership
• GF Drives Progress in Next-Generation Automotive Radar

Putting the “Smart” in Smartphones

Nearly every wireless call, text, email, photo or video, either taken or watched on smartphones in the last few years, was made possible through chips manufactured around the globe at GF. This is no accident: for years, we have been helping smartphone manufacturers overcome the toughest challenges necessary to meet the growing expectations of consumers.

This year was no exception. In September we announced an agreement with Qualcomm to deliver advanced 5G RF front-end products. As GF’s Dr. Bami Bastani put it: “Our strong collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies includes sub-6 GHz to unlock everyday access to 5G, and cutting-edge mmWave technology to take 5G to the next level” by delivering unmatched data speeds while continuing to provide the longest possible battery life for smartphones and many other 5G-connected devices. Read top tech analyst Pat Moorhead’s recap of the announcement here.

And at the 2021 GF Technology Summit, we announced the addition of exciting new features for our RF SOI solutions, which enable our customers to provide stronger and more reliable 5G connections.

GF Unveils New Brand

In July, GF introduced its new brand to the world. The new brand is the culmination of GF’s decade-plus journey, and embodies GF’s role as one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers.

Retaining GF’s signature orange color and augmenting it with a bold new logo and visual imagery, the new brand identity is reflective of GF’s vital role in the global economy and our commitment to redefining innovation and semiconductor manufacturing.

Be sure to check our blog post A New GF Brand for a New Era of More, and the Wall Street Journal article, Chip Maker GlobalFoundries Revamps Brand Amid Global Chip Shortage, for the story and development of the new GF brand.

Navigating the Chip Shortage

Semiconductor supply chain constraints, often referred to as the “chip shortage,” made headlines across the world throughout 2021. GF CEO Tom Caulfield played an outsized role in this global discussion.

In his frequent interviews on CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and other news outlets, he helped create awareness and foster understanding of the chip shortage, the intense spotlight it put on our industry, and on just how critical semiconductors are to the $91T world economy.

Tom also shared the many ways in which GF was taking action (see no. 3 below) to meet the moment and grow our global capacity to manufacture more of the feature-rich chips that have become the drivers of technological and economic growth.

Throughout the year, Tom participated in a trio of White House summits, speaking with U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and other Administration officials, and urging them to take bold action and help pave the way toward U.S federal investment in chip manufacturing to create jobs, shore up the supply chain, and increase the capacity of U.S.-made semiconductors.

Expanding our Global Manufacturing Footprint

In 2021, amidst unprecedented global demand for feature-rich semiconductors, GF announced it was expanding manufacturing capacity at its sites globally.

GF broke ground in June on the construction of a new fab at our Singapore campus. In partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board and with co-investments from committed customers, GF announced an investment of more than $4 billion to add capacity for 450,000 wafers per year, bringing GF’s Singapore campus up to approximately 1.5 million wafers per year.

In July we hosted the first GF Executive Summit at Fab 8 in Malta, New York, which convened leaders from government and industry to advance the national discussion around solving U.S. semiconductor supply chain challenges. CEO Tom Caulfield was joined by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer​, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo, former Pentagon officials, and executives from leading companies throughout the semiconductor supply chain.

At the summit, GF announced $1 billion in immediate investments to address the global chip shortage and add capacity to manufacture an additional 150,000 wafers per year at Fab 8. Sharing the stage with Sen. Schumer and Sec. Raimondo, CEO Tom Caulfield also announced plans were underway for GF to construct of a new fab on the Malta, N.Y., campus that will double the site’s capacity, using the same bold public-private partnership in close collaboration customers that fueled the expansion in Singapore.

GF also announced a $1 billion planned investment in Germany to grow the capacity of our Dresden facility, where in July our CEO hosted German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier.

There is so much excitement at GF around these expansions. As Tom put it: “Our industry is expected to grow more in the next decade than it did in the past 50 years and GF is stepping up to do its part as we work together to address the growing demand for technology innovation for the betterment of humanity.”

Driving Innovation in Automotive

GF is becoming the semiconductor foundry of choice for the world’s top vehicle-makers and their suppliers, in part because of the innovation we are bringing to the emerging auto trends of autonomous driving, connectivity, and electrification. Read more about this in our blog post: For Auto Industry, Innovation is GlobalFoundries’ Ace in the Hole.

As shown in no. 3 above, GF is pioneering a new economic model for our industry, based on long-term partnerships that help to ensure predictability, repeatability, and sustainability for both GF and our customers. Amidst the global chip shortage, these partnerships and alignment has never been more vital.

Throughout 2021, partnerships with automotive manufacturers and suppliers were prominent:

• GF and Ford announced a strategic collaboration to address advanced semiconductor manufacturing and technology development within the United States, aiming to boost chip supplies for Ford and the U.S. automotive industry
• BMW announced an agreement with GF to both build a more secure and resilient supply-chain partnership, and to accelerate technology development supporting the next generation of automotive innovation.
• The automotive supply chain was also a focus of Volkswagen leader Murat Akselat’s featured talk at the 2021 GF Technology Summit.
• GF and Bosch would partner to develop and manufacture next-generation automotive radar technology for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) applications, manufactured using GF’s 22FDX™ RF solution.

There is an open road of opportunity for further semiconductor innovation in automotive. As SVP Mike Hogan said, GF is laser-focused on creating new technologies for the car of tomorrow and “committed to building stronger relationships with the automotive industry to deliver innovation and address the growing demand for feature-rich chips.”

GF Launches IPO

An extraordinary milestone in GF’s history took place on October 28, when shares of GFS started trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange. In fact, GF was one of Nasdaq’s largest IPOs of the year and the largest semiconductor IPO ever.

Being a public company positions GF to further innovate and partner with customers to deliver semiconductors for humanity.

From ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq, to celebrations at our Fabs and sites around the world, to GF team members having their photos displayed in Times Square, to our CEO Tom Caulfield appearing on CNN and many other news outlets to discuss GF and our IPO, to incredible engagement from our employees, investors, customers, and partners – it was day none of us are likely to forget.

Thank you for reading our list Top 10 Stories from 2021! Wishing you happy holidays, a fantastic new year, and we’ll see you back on the Foundry Files in 2022!

By Gary Dagastine

From smartphones, wearable devices and automotive electronics to technology for schools and hospitals, digital technologies now are pervasive in virtually all aspects of modern life. They have brought unprecedented change to how we work, learn, travel, access healthcare and otherwise live our lives.

Semiconductors, as the building blocks of digital technologies, enable users to create innovative products which are more functional and energy-efficient, and less resource-intensive, than ever before. As a result, the health, safety and prosperity of individuals and society is tightly tied to feature-rich semiconductor technologies.

GlobalFoundries (GF) is one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, with advanced manufacturing facilities in the United States, Germany, and Singapore. GF delivers the feature-rich process technology solutions that are pervasive in our lives and vital to the innovations leading to a greener, more sustainable, better connected, and healthier world.

A Critical Resource for Humanity

Companies worldwide are striving to develop cleaner, more efficient and more environmentally preferable technologies for smart mobile devices; automotive systems; computing and artificial intelligence (AI); the communications and data center infrastructures; and a multitude of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, among others.

While these applications differ greatly in their functional requirements, what they all have in common is a need for chips that not only provide the high performance and specialized features required, but do so in an efficient, reliable and resource-sensitive manner.

GF offers an array of feature-rich, high-performance and power-efficient semiconductor platforms and related services that help customers build such systems. GF’s differentiated technology platforms such as RF-SOI (silicon-on-insulator), FD-SOI and silicon photonics – coupled with design enablement and application-specific features like analog/RF, embedded memory and advanced packaging – create solutions tailored to customers’ specific needs and markets.

A quick look at GF’s three core markets shows how GF’s existing platforms and development work are aimed at helping customers achieve their sustainability goals, with power efficiency running through all of the units as a key objective.

In each target market, GF semiconductor platforms are accelerating innovation and leading to a positive impact on humanity.

More Efficient Technologies for Mobile and Wireless

Nearly every wireless call, text, email, social media post, and streaming video passes through chips manufactured by GF. The company’s leading RF platforms were vital to making possible widespread telework and remote education, and are unlocking the power of 5G and future 6G networks.

Peter Gammel, VP and CTO GF’s Mobile and Wireless Infrastructure Business Unit (MWI), said that GF’s platforms for imaging, displays, security and power management in mobile and wireless systems are good examples of the company’s commitment to help customers build products in a more sustainable fashion.

“For imaging functions, the more you can do to reduce the amount of data needing to be processed, the faster an operation can be carried out and the less power required. By going from an analog imaging architecture to a digital one, the potential exists to reduce the amount of data by 100,000x. We are investigating how to do that using GF’s 22FDX™ platform because its ability to toggle between high-performance and energy-efficient operation offers unique advantages,” he said. “The 22FDX platform will make possible stacked image signal processors for higher performance, and low-power, low-leakage and ultra-small memory bitcells. 22FDX will also lead to reduced power consumption in sensors by enabling compute-near-data and imaging-to-action (rather than to pixels) architectures, and by reducing interface power consumption.”

In displays, Gammel said the 22FDX platform will also enable display architectures that keep the 100,000:1 data compressed as much as possible for as long as possible for higher efficiency, until it is expanded to match the human visual system. He also described how GF’s technologies can be used for microLEDs (Light Emitting Diodes), an emerging flat-panel display technology. “MicroLEDs can be enabled by GF’s GaN (gallium nitride) technology, currently in development, integrated with an 22FDX backplane. The combination will enable low-leakage, low-power operation, small size using stacking solutions, and co-design of analog and digital circuit functions to achieve the best compute/power/brightness tradeoff,” he said.

For enhanced security for mobile/wireless systems to protect user privacy, Gammel said that GF’s 55 BCD Lite® platform makes possible the integration of silicon LEDs and SPAD (Single-photon Avalanche Diode) sensors on the same chip. This may lead to quantum random-number-generating, low-power, ultra-small form-factor mobile quantum cryptography solutions to keep data safer and more secure. GF is developing these in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL).

GF’s 55 BCD Lite platform also enables highly efficient power management circuits that lead to longer battery lifetimes in mobile/wireless devices, reducing the amount of batteries sent to landfills.

Novel Automotive Connectivity, Electrification, Safety and Automation

From radars for assisted driving, to connectivity, to boosting the efficiency of electric vehicles, GF semiconductor technology enables automotive customers to produce vehicles that are safer and more efficient than ever before.

In addition to accelerating more energy-efficient smart factories and industrial IoT applications, GF semiconductor platforms are enabling customers to develop and bring to market increasingly complex IoT devices that are more innovative, more energy-efficient, and can run longer between charging.

Pirooz Parvarandeh, VP and CTO of GF’s Automotive, Industrial and Multi-market (AIM) strategic business unit, said that GF’s BCD technologies offer state-of-the-art figures of merit leading to increased efficiency in the supply and distribution of power in automotive, smart factory and data center applications. “This performance reduces power loss and dissipated heat, enabling customers to reduce the size/weight of their products and to save on cooling costs and energy,” he said.

GF’s 22FDX platform, meanwhile, enables industry-leading automotive radar solutions that bring many advantages to people and to the environment. “The 22FDX platform allows customers to build radar systems offering lower power for a given level of performance, along with lower overall vehicle energy consumption and increased automotive imaging range and resolution,” Parvarandeh said. “This performance enables higher levels of car safety, potentially saving lives and reducing the number of collisions. The societal value of reducing death and injury is incalculable.”

The GF automotive team is also pursuing unique technologies optimized for battery management systems. In vehicles, these systems optimize the use of stored energy in the batteries, which leads to more power-efficient driving. Additionally, GF technologies are used for making the actuators in vehicles more energy efficient.

Battery management systems will enable systems such as battery-operated vehicles, machinery and robots that operate longer on a charge and offer more functionality than at present. “We are also pursuing ultra-low-power technologies for a range of other battery-operated equipment for IoT, compute/control, human-machine interfaces and other applications,” Parvarandeh said.

Longer-term, the GF team is focused on a variety of other sustainable technologies, including platforms optimized for LED driver circuits, with the goal of reducing the amount of power used in lighting applications in homes, cities, and vehicles. as are energy-harvesting solutions that draw power from heat, vibration and other environmental inputs, for remote applications where batteries are impractical, such as IoT sensors. These energy-harvesting solutions can prolong battery life – requiring less energy use – and hold the potential to become significant drivers of efficiency as the number of IoT devices continue to rapidly increase.

Energy Efficiency for Computing, Data Centers

GF semiconductor platforms are directly addressing the known “power bottleneck” hampering the explosive growth of AI, and enabling customers to meet the power efficiency targets demanded by the industry and society. GF is also the industry leader in next-generation silicon photonics technology, which is positioned to significantly reduce the unsustainable growth of electricity needed to power data centers.

Ted Letavic, Vice President and CTO of GF’s Computing and Wireless Infrastructure (CWI) business unit, highlighted energy efficiency for computing and data center applications as a key sustainability goal for GF. Letavic pointed to GF’s multi-faceted efforts to increase energy efficiency in data centers, a huge and fast-growing consumer of the world’s electric power in the aggregate. “We’re using GF’s 12LP+ FinFET and 22FDX platforms with low voltage logic and memory to develop AI accelerators that can drastically reduce the amount of power required for data-centric workloads within data centers. Additionally, GF is applying the 55 BCD Lite and 22FDX platforms to address next-generation power delivery systems for heterogeneous compute solutions.

Letavic also said GF is working on other solutions for data centers that will enable customers to offer more sustainable products, and to take the next step on the sustainability curve. One example is the 45SPCLO silicon photonics technology platform, which uses photons instead of electrons to move data rapidly and efficiently from chip-to-chip and across datacenter networks. Photonics enables the reconfiguration of data centers to increase total overall energy efficiency of data transport. GF is enabling new ultra-low-power photonic compute paradigms, Letavic said, including wafer-scale photonic neural network processors and photonic quantum computation. Both paradigms offer substantial energy reduction per compute task, he said, and fuel the scale-out of traditional compute systems.

Solutions to Deliver Sustainability

GF’s differentiated semiconductor platforms offer compelling advantages to customers and to society at large. Furthermore, our investments in sustainable manufacturing practices provide tangible evidence of our commitment to making the world a better place.

Click here to read more about GF’s sustainable manufacturing and operations.

If you counted the number of electronics, appliances, and products connected to the internet in your home 18 months ago, the number would have been pretty small.  

But in the last year and a half, the number of “things” in our homes and day-to-day lives that are connected to the internet, known as IoT, has exploded. In 2020, for the first time in history, the number of IoT devices surpassed non-IoT-connected devices.1 By 2025, the number of IoT-connected devices is expected to reach nearly 31 billion.2  

We can be thousands of miles away from home and use our smartphones to open or close our garage door or adjust the temperature inside our house. Like smartphones, once we see the initial opportunities of what’s possible with IoT in our personal and work lives, we want more.  

Today’s IoT devices have higher levels of intelligence making it easier to connect them (which drives more usage) and makes it easier for devices to interact with us. IoT devices are becoming more sophisticated to support the growing demand for smart features like face, speech, and object recognition. And improvements in processing and intelligent reaction – the different things a device can do based on reacting to commands or recognition – will make it possible for devices to anticipate our needs and act without even being asked.  

The first generation of products connected to the internet required that data they collected to be sent to the cloud for processing. This year, it is expected that more than 30 billion devices will send data to the cloud, consuming precious power resources3. Without another solution, data centers will require massive expansion to handle the rise in the volume of data being created and stored. 

The Internet of Things is presenting incredible commercial opportunities, too: 

• Manufacturers will be able to track the real-time usage of equipment and anticipate failures before they even occur.  
• In health care, earbuds or smartwatches may evolve to monitor and send our heart rate and other biometrics. IoT could revolutionize diabetes care through non-invasive blood glucose monitoring.  
• Retailers and warehouse managers will have more accurate, real-time inventory data.  

The possibilities are endless. 

Technology driving IoT acceleration 

New technologies are helping drive IoT acceleration. Older “legacy” technology infrastructure for sending data did so at a higher cost, consumed more power, had slower response times, and was not as secure. 

In the future, IoT products will need to always be switched “on,” seamlessly connected, have a higher degree of intelligence, and be more secure – all things that existing devices are unable to provide in an energy-saving or cost-effective way.  

That’s where GlobalFoundries® (GF®) innovation is delivering in a big way. New architecture and innovations developed by the company enable longer battery life, reduce the cost of ownership, allow computing to be done at the device itself and help deliver secure wireless software updates. That’s right, if our garage door opener or thermostat is part of the Internet of Things, it needs updates, but GF is helping that happen effortlessly, behind the scenes. 

GF innovation is helping build, expand and improve IoT 

There’s a lot more to IoT than connecting a device to Wi-Fi. A great deal goes into making the Internet of Things possible, and the more products connected, the more IoT needs to run smoothly.  

“GlobalFoundries’ solutions are purpose-built specifically for IoT and are not a one-size-fits-all-purposes type of retrofit,” said Ed Kaste, vice president of Industrial and Multi-Market at GlobalFoundries. “While semiconductor chips are very small, they are packed with big, tangible, innovative benefits that are making the Internet of Things work better — and smarter — than ever.” 

GF technology offers superior capabilities in connecting with IoT through: 

• Better power solutions: For a smart speaker, doorbell camera or appliance to be connected, it has to be turned on in some way, and that drives a need for lower power solutions that enable connectivity but involve minimal battery consumption and minimal power “leakage.” In addition, the transceivers involved need to be effective enough to connect reliably yet consume very little power during the connection. 
• Seamless connection: To connect things that weren’t before, consumers expect the connection process to be simple, fast, and enduring.  
• Intelligence: Connecting a car, bike computer, light bulb or driverless vehicle to the internet is not an end in itself. Once connected, it has to do something for the user — the item needs to respond to commands, provide information and send alerts, as well as anticipate the user’s needs. The IoT “brain,” which is inside the chip itself, also needs to be smart enough to know what data it should pay attention to and what it shouldn’t. 
• Security: If an individual’s personal information or a business’ proprietary data is being communicated, it needs to be secure, and the privacy of that data fully protected. Attacks on IoT devices can occur in as few as five minutes after a connection is made, so security needs to be built in and effective from the start. 
• Sensing: GF technology can sense situations such as someone approaching a door in the dark and has the intelligence to turn on a nearby light and call the homeowner’s mobile phone. 

The GF FDX™ platform portfolio includes the development and fabrication of state-of-the-art semiconductor chips that are providing significant performance advantages in intelligence, security, and sensing.  

The GF 22FDXTM platform helps address the challenges being created by more than 30 billion connected devices. GF’s innovative solution combines high-density, low-power digital processing required for edge artificial intelligence (AI) with precision analog needed to enable high-performance radio frequency (RF) and sensing, providing the reliable communications that users expect.  

GF’s enabling of “AI inference” in semiconductor chips is relieving pressure on data centers and increasing the ability of edge devices to compute and store data, as well as take helpful actions on their own. 

At its annual GF Technology Summit, held virtually on Sept. 15, 2021, GF tech leaders discussed the company’s advances that are elevating the IoT, smartphone, auto and data center industries. 

At the event, the company announced that GF’s microdisplay solutions for IoT include new features that enable smaller and lighter augmented reality (AR) glasses to last longer on a single battery charge. GF’s microdisplay solutions are based on the 22FDX+ platform, which is seeing broad industry acceptance including more than $7.5 billion in design wins around the world. The platform has been optimized to improve process speed and reduce leakage while enabling enhanced pixel driver functionality. 

“As more devices are connected, more is needed to develop low-power, low-leakage solutions, as well as facilitate smooth connections, provide more intelligence and capability, protect information and facilitate ease of use,” Kaste added. “GlobalFoundries continues to develop innovative solutions for the growing and evolving needs of the Internet of Things, which is going to improve our daily lives for the foreseeable future.” 

To learn more about GF’s solutions powering home and industrial IoT, please click here.  

Two hours and fifty-five minutes. That’s how long the average American spends on their mobile phone every day. And the amount of time is only expected to increase.

That doesn’t mean we actually spend almost three hours talking on the phone. Because our smartphones aren’t just compact and lightweight telephones. They are also an incredibly powerful computer, a sophisticated camera and accompanying photo album, a music player that can store a massive catalog of songs, a video monitor that can stream live meetings, news, and sporting events, a personal address book, a piece of news, encyclopedia and research center, a control panel for appliances and cars that may be thousands of miles away, and a whole lot more.

And all of this is consolidated into a single device that we can fit in our pocket weighing less than half a pound.

In the last 10 years, the share of Americans that own a smartphone has more than doubled from 35% to 85%.¹ 

We want more, now

The more our phones can do, the more we want them to do. And we want our mobile phones to perform all of these functions and more, but do it better with faster speeds, better image, video, and sound quality, and fewer dropped calls and video meetings, all while consuming less battery power.

Adding new functions and improving upon the features and apps our phones already have requires stronger connections to data, such as video. For example, we have quickly come to expect the same phone and video call quality and reliability in places like a stadium, arena or on a beach as we have while working in an office or at home.

We want our credit card and bank information protected, especially when making $3.56 billion in mobile purchases last year, more than triple the $1 billion in purchases made just four years earlier.2

And we want this without having to carry any back-up batteries, or without our smartphones getting any bigger or heavier.

Is it possible to fulfill these competing expectations?

Because of the innovators at GlobalFoundries® (GF®), the answer is yes. GF has been helping smartphone manufacturers overcome the toughest challenges necessary to meet consumers’ growing expectations for years. In fact, nearly every wireless call, text, email, photo, or video, either taken or watched on smartphones in the last few years, was made possible through GF semiconductor chips inside.

GF solutions making more possible with smartphones

At its annual Tech Summit, held virtually on Sep. 15, 2021, GF introduced a series of innovations in connectivity, display, imaging, audio, security and power management that will bring “a new era of more” to life in smartphones.

Connectivity

“Connectivity is the oxygen of the mobile device user experience,” said Shankaran Janardharan, vice president for Mobile Radio and Wi-Fi at GF. “The connectivity enhancements being introduced today build on GlobalFoundries’ leadership in developing innovative solutions to meet consumers’ growing expectations for consistent connection quality, no matter where they are or the number of devices around them competing for connectivity.”

At the GlobalFoundries Technology Summit on Sept. 15, GF announced the addition of new switch and low noise amplifier (LNA) features as part of its existing RF (radio frequency) – SOI (silicon on insulator) solutions so RF chip designers can provide a stronger and more reliable 5G connection. The new features show that GF is already developing solutions to meet future sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G requirements.

The market for 5G mmWave-enabled handsets, which use frequency bands in the 24 GHz (gigahertz) to 47 GHz range, is expected to grow ten-fold between 2020 and 20253. Last year, many of the newest smartphones sold in the U.S. were equipped with 5G mmWave technology.

Sales of 5G-enabled smartphones are expected to more than triple from $108 billion this year to $337 billion in 2025, when 5G-compatible devices will represent a majority of smartphone sales for the first time.4

At the GlobalFoundries Technology Summit, GF also announced that its FDX™-RF process design kit (PDK) 22FDX™-EXT version 1.0_3.0 PDK now includes a new generation of RF mmWave functionality with a best-in-class, fully integrated power amplifier (PA).

Enhanced GF Wi-Fi solutions based on its 12nm and SiGe (Silicon Germanium) PA platforms were also announced. Both PDKs are available now.

For smartphone users, it will mean fewer dead zones that result in phone calls disconnected in the middle of a conversation, smoother video streaming and the speed made possible by a stronger connection.

New features include better RF and PA features and functionality for the latest Wi-Fi 6 and 6E so that chip designers can provide a higher-performing, stronger Wi-Fi connection for the newest generation of Wi-Fi-enabled products for more coverage and more connections.

GF announced that its unique RF (radio frequency) – SOI (silicon-on-insulator) Solutions on its 130 nm (nanometer) platform are now available in PDK (platform developers kit) CSOI8SW version 1.3.

The new version includes low and ultra-low voltage and low latency (the amount of time between a user’s request and a response) options, another way designers can integrate features that optimize the device for user preferences and habits.

“With accelerating demand for RF front-end products in a 5G world, robust low-power semiconductor solutions are critical,” said Christian Block, senior vice president and general manager, RFFE, QUALCOMM Germany RFFE GmbH. “Our collaboration with GlobalFoundries, and their leadership in RF-specific, feature-rich foundry solutions, helps to ensure that we’re able to meet the high-performance requirements of our cutting-edge 5G products.”

To learn more about GF’s agreement with Qualcomm Technologies, please click here.

Display

GF is taking smart device displays to an entirely new level. The company’s recently launched display solutions feature enables “variable refresh” that identifies the type of content being viewed by the user.

The feature improves the user experience for applications such as gaming, which require a higher rate of refreshing, while saving battery power through a lower refresh rate for the display of static or slow content. The user’s viewing experience is also superior by providing a “stutter-free” refresh rate for faster gaming content, and a “flicker-free” refresh rate for static or slow content.

GF Display Solutions are available in the GF HV platforms at 28nm, 40nm and 55nm, and the new features are offered in 28HV-25V PDK versions 0.5 available to customers now.

Successful prototyping at high yield – meaning the silicon is proven – has been demonstrated with this latest PDK. GF has already shipped more than 60,000 wafers in total from production-qualified 28HV technology.

Imaging

The proliferation of 5G-enabled mobile phones and the more reliable, responsive connectivity that comes with it is making major advances in mobile imaging, such as how content is captured and created, possible. Innovations such as 3D sensing and hyper-spectral sensors, 8K resolution, higher frame rates and new compression formats are making more immersive experiences possible for smartphone and smart device users.

In 2019, the average smartphone had between one and three sensors. By 2025, it is expected to grow to four to five. GF’s image sensor technology is being embraced throughout the smartphone industry.  The company’s imaging solutions now offer new features that allow image sensor designers to enable stacked complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors with more than 200 pixels of resolution, high-dynamic range, slow motion and lower power for the newest generation of smartphone cameras.

GF Imaging Solutions are available as both a general foundry offering in the 28nm platform and as custom offerings. The 28nm image signal processor (ISP) platform Version 1.0 PDK is available now. To date, GF has shipped 120 million units for mobile smartphones.

PDK version 1.0 is available for users to design the logic of die of stacked complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors in 28SLPe technology.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D sensors are the key feature to enable touchless control, face identification (ID) and future augmented reality (AR). GF’s 22FDX platform with embedded AI is designed for fast and power-efficient local decision-making used in this type of application.

Audio

In the second quarter of 2022, GF Audio Solutions PDK version 1.0 will be offered, adding embedded flash (eFlash) to its 55BCD (binary-coded decimal) Lite platform for audio amplification and haptic (touch) response.

The addition of this feature will provide smartphone users with improved audio quality with minimal noise or distortion, as well as virtual buttons with touch sensing (technology sensing human touch on a smartphone) and haptic feedback (the transmission of data or a response as a result of that touch) for gaming applications.

Today, five of the top seven smartphone manufacturers use GF audio amplification solutions, and the company has shipped more than three billion high-end audio amplification units.

Security

GF has been the leader in technology enabling secure mobile payment and protecting the privacy of consumer information, including innovations such as touchless transactions and tap-and-pay. In fact, more than two billion smart phones have been shipped with GF security solutions inside.

The company unveiled the next generation of GF Secure Solutions features including embedded resistive random-access memory (eRRAM) with a test-chip capable PDK (0.5) available in the fourth quarter of 2021. Embedded memory will provide users with the highest level of security without the vulnerability of external interfaces.

GF has shipped more than two billion units of secure near-field communication (NFC) chips to customers to support premium smartphones.

Power management

GF is also the smartphone industry leader in developing innovative solutions to extend battery life and maximize the user experience on a single charge.

At the Tech Summit, GF introduced the industry’s most advanced power management platform – 28BCDLite – which enables analog functions in the digital domain with integrated high-voltage and eRRAM. Platform version 0.5 will be available for test-chip design in the second quarter of 2022.

Users will benefit from longer battery life, faster charging and smaller form factors.

“All of the new features being announced today are a product of collaborating with our customers and building an understanding of the market and their business in ways we haven’t before,” said Jamie Schaeffer, vice president of Mobile and Wireless Infrastructure at GF. “The innovators at GlobalFoundries are developing unique solutions that improve the user experience, extend battery life and bolster data security without making smartphones larger or heavier.”

GF smartphone solutions available for other smart mobile devices

GF’s innovative solutions in connectivity, display, imaging and audio are also being offered for use with other smart, internet-connected mobile devices, such as watches, earbuds, headsets, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) glasses and more.

To learn more on how GF is enabling the Internet of Things (IoT), click here.

To learn more about GF’s mobile device solutions, click here.