General Motors Co (GM) signed a deal with GlobalFoundries Inc to lock up production capacity for semiconductors, helping the automaker manage a chip shortage that has hindered auto production for several years.
GlobalFoundries, a provider of made-to-order semiconductors, is to set aside capacity at its New York plant exclusively for chips destined for GM vehicles.
The automaker is planning to tell its chip design suppliers to use the company’s production to make some of the components it deems essential to its vehicles.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We see our semiconductor requirements more than doubling over the next several years as vehicles become technology platforms,” GM executive vice president of global product development, purchasing and supply chain Doug Parks said in a statement on Thursday.
GM has been reducing the number of unique chips needed to build increasingly complex vehicles.
‘RESILIENCE’
Photo: Bloomberg
Parks said the GlobalFoundries deal “will help establish a strong, resilient supply of critical technology.”
GlobalFoundries is positioning itself to take advantage of attempts to remake the semiconductor supply chain.
Governments in the US and Europe are pushing through support packages aimed at increasing local manufacturing of the devices and lessening a dependence on East Asia.
Outlining plans to increase his company’s footprint in the US, GlobalFoundries CEO Tom Caulfield has said he would put capacity in place when his customers commit to using it.
LESS ADVANCED CHIPS
Unlike Intel Corp and Micron Technology Inc, GlobalFoundries is concentrating its efforts on older types of chip manufacturing that it says would stay in high demand for years.
Electronic components in vehicles are not typically made on the most advanced chipmaking gear, but a dearth of investment in that type of production has made capacity tight.
Caulfield said his company is “committed to working with our customers in new and innovative ways to best address the challenges of today’s global supply chains.”
The Investment Commission yesterday approved a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) application to invest an additional US$3.5 billion in its Arizona subsidiary to manufactured advanced chips. The world’s largest contract chipmaker’s board of directors last month approved the funding project after TSMC started moving manufacturing equipment into the fab in December last year in preparation for the production of 4-nanometer chips next year. TSMC said it has also commenced the second phase of facility construction in Arizona. The second fab is to produce semiconductors using 3-nanometer technology in 2026. Altogether, TSMC plans to spend US$40 billion on the Arizona fabs, doubling its
KEY SECTOR: Taiwan’s new chip legislation is insufficient, and a more strategic ‘chip act’ that covers the whole semiconductor ecosystem is needed, MediaTek’s chairman said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) yesterday urged the government to formulate a state semiconductor strategy and comprehensive “chip act” that includes local chip designers and smaller-scale semiconductor companies, as they are facing intensifying competition from China. The government is playing an increasingly important role in safeguarding the local semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, given that the US, the EU and Japan are offering hefty subsidies and significant tax incentives to build semiconductor capacity domestically, as they have realized the strategic importance of semiconductors, Tsai said. To implement such a program, the government should take steps to finance a “chip act,” Tsai said
Microsoft Corp has threatened to cut off access to its Internet search data, which it licenses to rival search engines, if they do not stop using it as the basis for their own artificial intelligence (AI) chat products, people familiar with the dispute have said. The software maker licenses the data in its Bing search index — a map of the Internet that can be quickly scanned in real time — to other companies that offer Web search, such as Apollo Global Management Inc’s Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Last month, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing. Rivals
MOUNTING PRESSURE: Although bank failures in the US and Europe would not cause systemic risks, it would dampen consumers’ willingness to spend, GlobalWafers said GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that the financial turmoil in the US and Europe has dimmed the outlook for chip demand in the second half of this year, as growing economic uncertainty could dampen consumer spending. The Hsinchu-based wafer manufacturer said it is seeing greater pressure from economic uncertainty on the industry’s recovery, as customers would have not expected Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and a tier-one bank like Credit Suisse Group SA to collapse suddenly. Although the failures are unlikely to cause systemic risks, consumers would be cautious of spending on non-essential items, such
RSS