Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) new chip-manufacturing unit, Globalfoundries, will be able to hire workers and build plants at a time when its competitors can’t, chief executive officer Doug Grose said.
With an investment of as much as US$6 billion from the Abu Dhabi government, the newly formed company will have more negotiating muscle with equipment suppliers, Grose said in an interview. The company has two plants in Germany and is building another factory in Saratoga County, New York.
“This is a good environment to be building out, both here and in Germany,” said Grose, who spent 20 years at International Business Machines Corp. “When customers come back, we’ll be ready.”
Globalfoundries will make processors for AMD and seek orders from other chipmakers and designers. The company will become the third-largest producer of made-to-order chips behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), Grose said.
The company has about 3,000 employees, mostly based in Dresden, Germany, and plans to add an additional 1,400 when it builds the new plant in New York state.
While the recession may hold down the cost of building new plants, the company will need to hire salespeople to court new clients, Grose said. Abu Dhabi is investing in the semiconductor industry to diversify its economy, rather than make a quick profit, he said.
“It allows us to stop worrying about the cash and get focused on the business,” Grose said. “What they are doing has a huge investment horizon on it.”
Global semiconductor sales declined 29 percent in January, the fourth straight monthly slide, as demand for chips used in mobile phones and personal computers fell amid an economic recession, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said on March 2.
Total sales fell to US$15.3 billion from US$21.5 billion a year earlier, the SIA said. Sales in the first month of this year fell 12 percent from December’s US$17.4 billion, it said.
Last month, researcher Gartner Inc said the global financial crisis will cut worldwide semiconductor revenue by 24 percent this year, and the industry won’t return to last year’s sales levels until 2013.
AMD, which competes with Intel Corp in the market for personal computer microprocessors, announced the agreement with the Abu Dhabi government last October. Globalfoundries has assumed about US$1.2 billion of AMD’s debt as part of the transaction. It will be based in Sunnyvale, California, adjacent to AMD.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”