STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding to build a 300-mm semiconductor manufacturing facility that will help develop the fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) technology ecosystem. The new facility will represent a multi-billion–euro investment and is expected to create about 1,000 jobs.

The jointly operated fab will support GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX FD-SOI process technology and STMicroelectronics’ technology roadmap down to 18 nm for automotive, industrial, IoT, and communications infrastructure applications, companies said.

The facility, which will be adjacent to STMicroelectronics’ existing 300-mm manufacturing site in Crolles, France, is set to reach full capacity by 2026, with up to 620,000 300-mm chips per year. The breakdown will be as follows: about 42% for STMicroelectronics and about 58% for GlobalFoundries.

Expansion of STMicroelectronics's existing 300-mm fab in Crolles, France

“This new manufacturing facility will support our $20 billion+ revenue ambition,” said Jean-Marc Chéry, president and CEO of STMicroelectronics, at a press conference held today (July 11). Moving to the strengths of the collaboration, Chéry said, “We have a long legacy partnership with GlobalFoundries. We strongly promote the FD-SOI ecosystem, and by doing it together, we will reach a bigger scale [and] go faster than everybody in Europe.”

Thomas Caulfield, CEO of GlobalFoundries, confirmed, “We have a common belief in the FD-SOI platform. We’ve been partners for a long time, and it made natural sense to create capacity together to address the markets and customers that we both serve.”

Refusing to divulge the exact amount, partners indicated that the project will represent a multi-billion–euro investment and will receive “significant” financial support from the State of France. The French media sites Le Monde and Le Figaro, however, speak of an estimated investment of €5.7 billion.

The project remains subject to the execution of definitive agreements and various regulatory approvals, including from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition, and to the completion of the consultation with STMicroelectronics’ French Works Council.

FD-SOI research collaboration

At today’s press conference, Caulfield listed the main benefits of FD-SOI technology. He said, “FD-SOI’s inherent architectural advantage brings lower power losses in the off state or idle mode and lower power consumption while the devices are on. FD-SOI offers lower gate capacitance and leakage current. It has latch-up immunity and lower noise and higher gains versus bulk [CMOS technologies]. FD-SOI technology is radiation-hard, which means high resilience against radiation errors, bringing additional reliability to high-performance system-on-chip applications and, in particular, mission-critical applications and space applications. And FD-SOI dramatically improves SRAM memory performance, again operating at low voltage and extremely low leakage.”

FD-SOI has its roots in the Grenoble area and has been a key R&D area for over 20 years at CEA-Leti.

In April, CEA-Leti, STMicroelectronics, Soitec, and GlobalFoundries announced a collaboration to define the next-generation roadmap for FD-SOI technology in order to provide higher performance, lower power consumption, and lower costs to address the needs of major European markets such as automotive, IoT, 5G/6G, and manufacturing 4.0.

Caulfield said the new facility will contribute to the ambition of the European Chips Act of achieving 20% of the worldwide semiconductor production by 2030. “It also enhances the European FD-SOI platform ecosystem, ranging from R&D to manufacturing. We’re doing this alongside existing R&D collaborations among ST, GlobalFoundries, CEA-Leti, and Soitec as we develop the next-generation FD-SOI roadmap.”

At a press conference in June, EE Times Europe asked Soitec CEO Paul Boudre about this FD-SOI research collaboration. He commented, “We have set up joint teams, a joint laboratory, and joint clean rooms. We have a phenomenal pool of expertise. GlobalFoundries is not mistaken when it comes to partnering with ST and us to develop technologies on existing platforms. Today, we have the same challenges with our partner, Leti. We work together on the same customer commitments. R&D is adapted to the evolution of a product with a given customer time to market.”

By: DocMemory
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