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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday November 04 2018, @10:10PM   Printer-friendly

GlobalFoundries Establishes Avera Semiconductor: a Custom Chip Company

GlobalFoundries this week announced that it has spun off its ASIC Solutions division, establishing Avera Semiconductor, a wholly owned subsidiary that will help fabless chip developers to design their products. Avera will work closely with GlobalFoundries' customers to enable them take advantage of various process technologies that GF has, but the company will also establish ties with other contract makers of semiconductors to help their clients develop chips to be made using leading edge process technologies at 7 nm and beyond.

[...] The new wholly owned subsidiary of GlobalFoundries has over 850 employees, an annual revenue of over $500 million, and ongoing projects worth $3 billion. By working not only with clients of GlobalFoundries, but expanding to customers of companies like Samsung Foundry and TSMC, Avera has a chance to increase its earnings over time. Avera Semi is led by Kevin O'Buckley, a former head of ASIC Solutions, who joined GlobalFoundries from IBM.

Shuffling money on the Titanic?

Previously: AMD, GlobalFoundries Renew Vows, Focus on Path to 7nm
GlobalFoundries to Spend $10-12 Billion on a 7nm Fab, Possibly $14-18 Billion for 5nm
AnandTech Interview With the CTO of GlobalFoundries: 7nm EUV and 5 GHz Clock Speeds
GlobalFoundries Abandons "7nm LP" Node, TSMC and Samsung to Pick Up the Slack

Related: Can Intel Really Share its Fabs?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @11:28PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @11:28PM (#757775)

    How about a link or two on the background of ASICs industry? Is there big enough a market for this? Otherwise we have no frame of reference here.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday November 05 2018, @12:58AM

    by RamiK (1813) on Monday November 05 2018, @12:58AM (#757802)

    Wikipedia covers it well enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit [wikipedia.org]

    Basically ASIC is niche IC for small volume orders. As for why they spinned them as their own firm, honestly it might be as trivial as factory and offices locations or for tax purposes. Though my guess is that they have a lot of high-volume customers in established markets with established product lines that the guys that approach the ASIC are trying to compete against and the separation is necessary to avoid friction and conflicts of interests. Familiar enough pattern in the EMS [wikipedia.org] trenches...

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