GlobalFoundries Sacks 5% of Workforce

发布时间：2018-06-13 00:00
作者：Ameya360
来源：EE Times
阅读量：1140

Globalfoundries has started a layoff aimed at trimming 5 percent of its workforce as part of its new focus on financial performance. The company does not plan to close any fabs or cut any of its existing services.

The layoffs will affect about 900 of GF’s 18,000 employees, “across a variety of functional areas and all geographies,” a company spokesman said. “We remain fully committed to delivering our roadmap,” he added.

The company informed workers of the cuts on Monday (June 11). It will offer a voluntary separation program it expects many people will accept.

The effort aims “to improve our global cost structure and minimize redundancies that have accrued from previous mergers and acquisitions” and could take several weeks to complete, the spokesman said.

GF is the world’s second largest pure-play foundry with 2017 revenues estimated at $5.86 billion by IC Insights. It started life as the spin out of AMD’s fabs, then acquired Chartered’s fabs in Singapore and IBM’s fabs in the U.S.

The company is dwarfed by the sector’s dominant player, TSMC, which reported sales of $32.2 billion in 2017. Samsung, the parent company of GF's 14nm partner, is the world's fourth-largest foundry, with about $4.8 billion in 2017 foundry revenue, according to IC Insights. 

GlobalFoundries Sacks 5% of Workforce

GF is privately owned by the Mubadala Investment Company in the United Arab Emirates. In early March, the company named Tom Caulfield, the manager of its leading-edge fab in New York, as its new CEO, marking the shift to its tighter focus on financial performance.

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GlobalFoundries reshapes technology portfolio
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GlobalFoundries reshapes technology portfolio

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced an important step in its transformation, continuing the trajectory launched with the appointment of Tom Caulfield as CEO earlier this year. In line with the strategic direction Caulfield has articulated, GF is reshaping its technology portfolio to intensify its focus on delivering truly differentiated offerings for clients in high-growth markets.GF is realigning its leading-edge FinFET roadmap to serve the next wave of clients that will adopt the technology in the coming years. The company will shift development resources to make its 14/12nm FinFET platform more relevant to these clients, delivering a range of innovative IP and features including RF, embedded memory, low power and more. To support this transition, GF is putting its 7nm FinFET program on hold indefinitely and restructuring its research and development teams to support its enhanced portfolio initiatives. This will require a workforce reduction, however a significant number of top technologists will be redeployed on 14/12nm FinFET derivatives and other differentiated offerings.“Demand for semiconductors has never been higher, and clients are asking us to play an ever-increasing role in enabling tomorrow’s technology innovations,” Caulfield said. “The vast majority of today’s fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore’s Law. We are shifting our resources and focus by doubling down on our investments in differentiated technologies across our entire portfolio that are most relevant to our clients in growing market segments.”In addition, to better leverage GF’s strong heritage and significant investments in ASIC design and IP, the company is establishing its ASIC business as a wholly-owned subsidiary, independent from the foundry business. A relevant ASIC business requires continued access to leading-edge technology. This independent ASIC entity will provide clients with access to alternative foundry options at 7nm and beyond, while allowing the ASIC business to engage with a broader set of clients, especially the growing number of systems companies that need ASIC capabilities and more manufacturing scale than GF can provide alone.GF is intensifying investment in areas where it has clear differentiation and adds true value for clients, with an emphasis on delivering feature-rich offerings across its portfolio. This includes continued focus on its FDXTM platform, leading RF offerings (including RF SOI and high-performance SiGe), analog/mixed signal, and other technologies designed for a growing number of applications that require low power, real-time connectivity, and on-board intelligence. GF is uniquely positioned to serve this burgeoning market for “connected intelligence,” with strong demand in new areas such as autonomous driving, IoT and the global transition to 5G.“Lifting the burden of investing at the leading edge will allow GF to make more targeted investments in technologies that really matter to the majority of chip designers in fast-growing markets such as RF, IoT, 5G, industrial and automotive,” said Samuel Wang, research vice president at Gartner. “While the leading edge gets most of the headlines, fewer customers can afford the transition to 7nm and finer geometries.  14nm and above technologies will continue to be the important demand driver for the foundry business for many years to come. There is significant room for innovation on these nodes to fuel the next wave of technology.”
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GlobalFoundries Halts 7nm Work
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