22FDX®: Enabler for IoT? January 18, 2016There is no question that the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be the next big application for microelectronics. 50 billion devices to be connected by the year 2020 – this is the vision of the IoT development paradigm. IoT systems are going to show a high diversity of function and shape. While some systems may be small, others might expand to become as large as today’s SoC systems for the mobile internet. The question is, how do we address IoT system components, which need to be fast but consume low static stand-by power when not in use? GLOBALFOUNDRIES 22FDX technology offers an excellent fit to such system and cost requirements. The determining new feature of this 22nm fully depleted SOI (FD-SOI) technology is the thin silicon layer where the active transistor is formed. In traditional SOI technologies a conventional transistor is formed in an isolated well, which is typically left floating in digital circuits. FD-SOI transistors are much thinner, and no well is formed. In addition, device isolation is a lot simpler, which also reduces implant steps. And, as engineers contemplate their next node, they need to keep in mind that the 22FDX flow provides FinFET-like performance with ultra-low power at a cost comparable to 28nm planar technologies. Below are some additional noteworthy data points on the technology: 70% lower power compared to 28nm High K Metal Gate (HKMG) 20% smaller die than 28nm bulk planar Lower die cost than FinFETs A Sandbox for Creative Designers Software-controlled body-biasing, which provides a flexible trade-off for managing high performance and low power, offers an additional degree of freedom for system and circuit design with 22FDX. Real time power consumption trade-offs can be made at the device level — mostly by powering major functional blocks. This is one reason why industry analyst Dan G. Hutcheson believes GF’s 22FDX will be a “major revolution.” 22FDX: Multiple Body-Bias and Vt Points on Same Die Additionally, 22FDX offers capabilities for design flexibility and intelligent control that enable innovation that hasn’t been possible in the past. These capabilities include: Post-silicon tuning enables lower power consumption while maintaining high circuit performance Integrated RF includes tuning “knobs” to reduce RF power by up to 50 percent, making a separate RF chip unnecessary The 22FDX technology design ecosystem is building fast. In November, all major EDA vendors, in particular Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor Graphics, announced they are offering tool suites adapted for 22FDX. They are a key part of an ecosystem that is expanding to support our customers’ success. Design Migration to 22FDX from Bulk Node 22FDX is a breakthrough technology with a robust future, extending Moore’s Law through delivering the die size reductions, power reductions, increases in performance and increased functionality and without more complex manufacturing processes. Subramani Kengeri, Vice President, General Management, CMOS Platforms Business Unit at GF, will present on enabling next-generation innovation with 22FDX on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 at the FD-SOI Forum in Tokyo, Japan.
Sidense Qualifies 1T-OTP Memory IP at GLOBALFOUNDRIES 55nm Low-Power Process Node December 29, 2015CHANDLER, Ariz., July 12, 2016 — Microchip Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHP), a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, through its Silicon Storage Technology (SST) subsidiary, announced today qualification and availability of SST’s low-mask-count embedded SuperFlash® non-volatile memory (NVM) on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 130 nm BCDLite® technology platform. SST’s embedded SuperFlash memory solution requires the addition of only four masking steps to GLOBALFOUNDRIES’s BCDLite technology that provides power, microcontroller (MCU) and industrial IC designers with a cost-effective, high-endurance embedded Flash solution. In high-volume power applications such as battery charging (5V-30V), the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 130 nm BCDLite platform paired with the SST SuperFlash embedded memory capability enables advanced battery monitoring that accurately gauges the age and health of the battery.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Strengthens Presence in Asia through Regional Headquarter Status in Singapore December 1, 2015 First regional headquarters office outside of United States Shared global services and management of regional subsidiaries to better serve customers throughout Asia and other geographies Committed to growing success in Asia and global semiconductor sector Singapore, December 1, 2015 — GLOBALFOUNDRIES, a leading provider of semiconductor manufacturing technology, today announced that its subsidiary, GF Singapore Pte. Ltd., has received the Regional Headquarters (RHQ) award by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). The RHQ status is granted by EDB to companies that that demonstrate their commitment to manage their regional headquarters with substantial investments in Singapore. The RHQ status offers various incentives, including tax benefits. “Receiving the RHQ status for our Singapore site is a testament of our long term commitment to the region and enables us to deeply anchor our relationships in Asia Pacific, ” said Mr. KC Ang, Senior Vice President and General Manager of GF Singapore Operations. “We appreciate the long-standing support from the Singapore EDB, and we look forward to continuing our success in this region and growth in the global semiconductor sector.” In line with the RHQ status, GF Singapore conducts activities in general management and administration, strategic business planning and development, marketing and sales in key Asian markets. In addition, the Singapore site is offering its expertise in advanced technology design and enablement, IT application services and finance control and administration to GF’s other global locations, including its manufacturing sites in Germany and the U.S.A. “We are pleased that GF has chosen Singapore as its regional headquarters outside of the USA,” said Mr. Yeoh Keat Chuan, Managing Director of the Singapore Economic Development Board. “GF’s decision is a testament to Singapore’s value as a location from which companies can manage and grow their businesses in Asia. We look forward to further strengthening our long partnership with GF.” ABOUT GF GF is the world’s first full-service semiconductor foundry with a truly global footprint. Launched in March 2009, the company has quickly achieved scale as one of the largest foundries in the world, providing a unique combination of advanced technology and manufacturing to more than 250 customers. With operations in Singapore, Germany and the United States, GF is the only foundry that offers the flexibility and security of manufacturing centers spanning three continents. The company’s 300mm fabs and 200mm fabs provide the full range of process technologies from mainstream to the leading edge. This global manufacturing footprint is supported by major facilities for research, development and design enablement located near hubs of semiconductor activity in the United States, Europe and Asia. GF is owned by the Mubadala Development Company. For more information, visit https://www.globalfoundries.com. Media Contact: Jason GorssGF518-698-7765[email protected]
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Receives Quality Award from INOVA Semiconductors GmbH November 19, 2015SINGAPORE, November 19, 2015 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced it has been presented with an Award of Excellence from INOVA Semiconductors GmbH, a specialist in the development of state-of-the-art products for Gigabit/s serial data communication for in-vehicle Display- and Driver Assistance Systems. This award acknowledges GF for its ability to achieve top quality and yield performance for the silicon wafers produced specifically for the customer’s RF communication products used in the automotive market. Driven by “Zero Excursion, Zero Defect” (ZEZD) mindset, this is a testament to GF’s continuous strive for improvement to increase initial product quality and reduce wafer failure rate after delivery. “Achieving zero defect is our goal and GF’s proven expertise in the automotive semiconductor supply chain plays an important role in helping us to reach that goal,” said Robert Kraus, INOVA Semiconductors CEO. “It is a great honor for GF to receive this award from INOVA. This award further solidifies our position in serving the automotive market over a decade with high quality and reliability standard, and propel us to become a leading foundry in this segment,” said KC Ang, SVP and General Manager for GF Singapore. GF completes a range of industry certifications and audits every year in its continuous commitment to semiconductor quality and reliability. Every fab in Singapore are certified or exceeding ISO-TS 16949, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, including the customer-led VDA6.3 audits that exceed the TS16949 standard. GF is also a member of the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) which sets global industry standards for automotive semiconductor quality. About GF GF is the world’s first full-service semiconductor foundry with a truly global footprint. Launched in March 2009, the company has quickly achieved scale as one of the largest foundries in the world, providing a unique combination of advanced technology and manufacturing to more than 250 customers. With operations in Singapore, Germany and the United States, GF is the only foundry that offers the flexibility and security of manufacturing centers spanning three continents. The company’s 300mm fabs and five 200mm fabs provide the full range of process technologies from mainstream to the leading edge. This global manufacturing footprint is supported by major facilities for research, development and design enablement located near hubs of semiconductor activity in the United States, Europe and Asia. GF is owned by Mubadala Development Company. For more information, visit https://www.globalfoundries.com. About INOVA Semiconductors Inova Semiconductors is a fabless semiconductor company and the developer of APIX: a serial high speed Gigabit multichannel link to interconnect displays, cameras and control units over a single cable. Inova specializes in developing state-of-the-art products for serial data communication, with a focus on digital video and the automotive market. Based in Germany, Inova was founded in 1999. Today, APIX is used by ten leading car brands and more than 20 tier 1 suppliers. For more information, visit https://www.inova-semiconductors.com.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Launches High-Performance ASIC Offering on 14nm FinFET Process Technology November 11, 2015GLOBALFOUNDRIES FX-14™ delivers industry’s most complete ASIC offering for chip designers targeting cloud, data center, and communication applications Santa Clara, Calif., November 11, 2015 — GF today announced the availability of FX-14™, an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) offering built on the company’s next-generation 14nm FinFET process technology. The GF FX-14 ASIC offering is an ideal solution for customers seeking to strike a balance between high bandwidth, low power, and cost for cloud networking, wireless base station, compute, and storage applications. With the recent acquisition of IBM’s Microelectronics Division, the FX-14 ASIC offering combines GF’s manufacturing scale and process technology leadership with a legacy of ASIC expertise that has helped customers bring some of the industry’s most complex ASICs to market. Using GF’s 14LPP process technology, FX-14 leverages the production-proven 14nm FinFET platform from the company’s Fab 8 facility in Saratoga County, NY. “In order to enable extremely high-speed connectivity solutions for a wide range of networking applications, we require ASIC solutions that provide an optimal balance of performance, power and cost,” said Kianoosh Naghshineh, CEO, Chelsio Communications, Inc. “The combination of the recently acquired IBM ASIC design expertise and GF’s 14LPP technology enables Chelsio to continue to push the price-performance curve and deliver industry-leading solutions to our customers.” “The FX-14 ASIC offering continues to extend our leadership in delivering the most advanced ASIC solutions for the wired and wireless networking infrastructure,” said Mike Cadigan, senior vice president of product management at GF. “Coupling the legacy of strong ASIC expertise with GF’s 14LPP technology provides our customers the best combination to differentiate and stay ahead of evolving marketplace demands.” The FX-14 ASIC offering includes an enhanced, optimized intellectual property (IP) portfolio, featuring leading-edge ARM cores and ARM® Artisan® physical IP. The broad lineup of cores for system-on-chip designs include 64-bit ARM Cortex®-A72 and ARM Cortex-A53 processors. “The industry-leading ARM processors that power more than 95% percent of the smartphones shipping today are an ideal complement to GF’s FX-14 ASIC offering,” said James McNiven, general manager, CPU group, ARM. “Our latest collaboration efforts with GF on the FX-14 ASIC offering will further enable our mutual silicon partners to deliver highly-advanced SoCs.” The FX-14 offering also delivers an optimized IP portfolio including High Speed Serdes (HSS) solutions. The HSS solutions range from the best in class architecture for high performance 56G backplane and chip-to-chip designs to optimized 30G and 16G SERDES designs covering a broad range of interface standards. GF’s embedded memory solutions include ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM), capable of billions of searches per second as well as high density and high performance memory compilers. These memory compilers exploit the industry’s smallest memory cell to achieve outstanding SRAM density as well as take advantage of a performance-tuned memory cell to achieve the best in class performance. GF’s 14LPP technology offering was qualified in the third quarter of 2015 and is on track for volume production in 2016. FX-14 design kits are available to customers now. For more information on GF’s ASIC solutions, visit our booth #607 at ARM TechCon from November 10-12, in Santa Clara, California, or go online at www.globalfoundries.com ABOUT GF GF is the world’s first full-service semiconductor foundry with a truly global footprint. Launched in March 2009, the company has quickly achieved scale as one of the largest foundries in the world, providing a unique combination of advanced technology and manufacturing to more than 250 customers. With operations in Singapore, Germany and the United States, GF is the only foundry that offers the flexibility and security of manufacturing centers spanning three continents. The company’s 300mm fabs and 200mm fabs provide the full range of process technologies from mainstream to the leading edge. This global manufacturing footprint is supported by major facilities for research, development and design enablement located near hubs of semiconductor activity in the United States, Europe and Asia. GF is owned by Mubadala Development Company. For more information, visit https://www.globalfoundries.com. Media Contact: Erica McGillGF(518) 305-5978[email protected]
Synopsys Collaborates with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to Deliver Up to 50 Percent Power Reduction for Designs Using the 22FDX® Platform November 9, 2015Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) today announced that its collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES has resulted in a comprehensive RTL-to-GDSII solution for the industry’s first 22-nanometer (nm) fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) technology process. GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 22FDX platform delivers FinFET-like performance and energy-efficiency at a cost comparable to 28-nm planar technologies.
Mentor Graphics Announces Collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES on Reference Flow and Process Design Kit for 22FDX® Platform November 9, 2015WILSONVILLE, Ore., November 9, 2015—Mentor Graphics Corp. (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced it is collaborating with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to qualify the Mentor® RTL to GDS platform, including the RealTime Designer™ physical RTL synthesis solution and Olympus-SoC™ place & route system, for the current version of the GLOBALFOUNDRIES® 22FDX platform reference flow. In addition, Mentor and GLOBALFOUNDRIES are working on the development of the Process Design Kit (PDK) for the 22FDX platform. The PDK includes support for the Mentor Calibre® platform, covering design rule checking (DRC), layout vs. schematic (LVS) and metal fill solutions for 22FDX. These solutions help mutual customers optimize their designs using the capability of 22FDX technology to manage the power, performance and leakage.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Qualifies ANSYS Solutions for the Latest Generation of Chip Technologies November 9, 2015PITTSBURGH, Nov. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Customers of GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ANSYS (NASDAQ: ANSS) have the power to innovate the next generation of electronic devices thanks to GLOBALFOUNDRIES qualification of ANSYS solutions. This qualification enables customers to bring their cutting-edge products to market even faster while reducing design costs and risk.
ATopTech’s Physical Implementation Tools Enabled for GLOBALFOUNDRIES 22FDX® Platform Reference Flow November 9, 2015SANTA CLARA, CA – November 9, 2015 – ATopTech, a leader in next-generation physical design solutions, today announced their Aprisa™ and Apogee™ Place & Route tools are now enabled for the current version of the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 22FDX platform reference flow. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has qualified these tools for the 22FDX reference flow to provide customers with the design flexibility of using body bias to manage power, performance and leakage needed to create the next-generation chips for mainstream mobile, IoT and networking applications.
Cadence Digital and Signoff Tools Enabled for GLOBALFOUNDRIES 22FDX® Platform Reference Flow November 9, 2015Cadence Modus Test Solution Enables Support for Safety-Critical SoC Designs Using ARM MBIST Interface. Cadence today announced that the Cadence® Modus™ Test Solution now supports the ARM® Memory Built-In Self Test (MBIST) interface…
