Chartered deal would earn GlobalFoundries global status

LONDON — Just over a month ago we wrote that if GlobalFoundries could build out its customer list with European chipmakers for its Dresden wafer fabs it could be the elusive EuroFoundry that many have discussed and more besides.

We even observed that with a fab under construction in Albany, New York state, its Abu Dhabian backers were reversing a trend to move manufacturing east.

However, the announcement of a planned takeover of Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. by Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Investment Co. for $3.9 billion and the folding of that purchase into GlobalFoundries, would allow that company to live up to its global name.

It is an apparent match made in heaven. It allows AMD's holding in GlobalFoundries to be further diluted taking it yet further to being a fabless chip company. It allows the state of Singapore to off-load its interest in chip making which having served its purpose in the 1990s it no longer sees as strategic. And it allows GlobalFoundries to achieve critical mass and stability like a three-legged stool with plants in Asia, Europe and a massive plant pending in the United States.

The only thing that was needed to make it happen was several billions of Abu Dhabian petrodollars and the political will — brewing in the region for more than a decade — to get into electronics.

At the time of the announcement that STMicroelectronics would move to take some manufacturing to Dresden, concerns were expressed that while GlobalFoundries' manufacturing process technology was on a par with that of foundry market leader TSMC, its customer and revenue base was thin. In essence it was just AMD in Dresden and the thoughts expressed were that this would not necessarily sustain the company while Albany came on-stream.

With the addition of Singaporean Chartered GlobalFoundries joins the mainstream of the IBM Common Platform club and grabs a revenue stream from chips headed towards a much longer list of customers including Qualcomm, Broadcom, Microsoft and others.

Chartered was never a star of the foundry scene — more a well-backed and consistently supported also ran — and so this does not catapult GlobalFoundries into direct competition with TSMC. But this does push the company up the lists into the second tier alongside United Microelectronics Corp. and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. It also lives up to the company's global aspirations.

Related links and articles:

Chartered-GlobalFoundries marriage is set to change landscape

ATIC to buy, fold Chartered into GlobalFoundries

GlobalFoundries could be the elusive Eurofoundry, and more

From A to D and back again