GlobalDomination
It was clear from the moment ATIC bought AMD's fabs that its target market was the SoC (system on chip) space. While the AMD business remains important to GlobalFoundries, it's clear SoCs are where the growth is, and today it has announced another initiative designed to take this market away from competitors like TSMC.
GlobalSolutions will be officially unveiled at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) next week, and is being positioned as a ‘global partner ecosystem'. The purpose of it is to get a bunch of companies involved in the design and manufacture of SoCs together to allow GlobalFoundries to provide a comprehensive SoC platform.
At least that's our take on it, here's what marketing SVP Jim Kupec has to say:
"As chip design grows in complexity and manufacturing partnerships become increasingly critical, foundry customer enablement needs to extend beyond process design kits and reference flows to include the full spectrum of the semiconductor value chain.
"To this end, GlobalSolutions includes ecosystem partners in all aspects of design enablement, turnkey services, design for manufacturability, optical proximity correction and mask operations, and will further expand our capabilities in advanced assembly solutions. This will allow our customers to unlock their innovation potential and differentiate at all levels of the design process, from the silicon and SoC level all the way up to the full system."
So there you have it. There doesn't seem to be a website for this new organisation yet, but here are the companies that will be represented on its stand at DEC:
- EDA: Cadence Design Systems, Magma Design Automation, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys
- IP: Analog Bits, ARM, ChipEstimate.com, Cosmic Circuits, Denali Software, eMemory Technology, Kilopass, Sidense, Synopsys, Virage Logic
- SoC Services: eSilicon, Open-Silicon, Socle
- Mask Services: AMTC, DNP, Toppan Photomasks
- Assembly/Test: ASE Group, Amkor, STATS ChipPAC
Fittingly for a company spawned from AMD, GlobalFoundries has put itself at the centre of a broad, essentially anti-Intel, alliance. As well as GlobalSolutions, it is a core member of the Common Platform manufacturing alliance with IBM and Samsung. The biggest thing all these companies have in common is a desire to service the ARM-based SoC market.
