At SEMICON West this week there is significant buzz around Fab 2 and what it represents for GLOBALFOUNDRIES, for the US and for the global semiconductor industry as a whole. Tom Sonderman, vice president of GLOBALFOUNDRIES' Manufacturing Systems and Technology, also called for a renewed focus On 300mm manufacturing during a panel discussion on market strategies, technologies, capital spending, and other strategic plans of the world's major chip foundries. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has a July 24th groundbreaking planned for Fab 2 in Saratoga County, NY.

The technology in Fab 2 will be absolutely state of the art. Our current plan is to ramp it on 28nm technology in 2H 2012 and then make a quick transition to 22nm, in a similar fashion to what we did with Fab 36 for AMD in Dresden. Ramping on a mature technology generation reduces significant risk in bringing a new fab successfully online and into production. Of course Fab 2 will also come stacked with the latest generation of our patented APM software to ensure maximum automation, control and predictability in rapidly ramping production for our customers at mature yield.