At its annual Technology Summit in Europe, taking place in Munich at the end of September, GlobalFoundries (GF) poised itself to seize the opportunities unleashed by edge inference and interconnected vehicles, leveraging its speciality technology platforms. Thomas Caulfield, GlobalFoundries CEO, noted at the summit that neither electrification nor partial automotive driving are the real new things. Instead, the CEO of the world's third largest foundry by revenue saw a revolution underway as automotives become interconnected units, each equipped with hundreds of sensors. Most important of all - instead of a cloud-driven AI revolution, GF sees the vast amount of data harvested by the sensors to be processed at the edge, as transmitting data to and from the cloud for inference would be uneconomical.
As reported by the German media Elektroniknet, though Caulfield is convinced that AI will revolutionize not only the automotive sector, but also the entire tech industry, indicating that "the opportunities of AI are exaggerated in the short term, but underestimated in the long term." The GF CEO observed that ChatGPT has only demonstrated to the public the power of AI, and it would be wrong to think that AI only runs in the cloud based on supercomputers.
"I'm convinced that AI is for our industry what smartphones were in the 2000s; after the smartphone wave, we now have the IoT and Edge AI wave," indicated Caulfield, adding that AI will not replace the previous waves, but instead build on the infrastructure already created.
To better understand the ongoing AI revolution, a three-level model was proposed by the GF chief executive: digitization, connectivity, and the cloud. While analog data is collected by sensors and converted into a digital format, the cloud is required for AI training. Connectivity, without which the system cannot function, accelerates a positive feedback loop that sees the network itself becoming a computer that is powered by intelligence at the edge, according to the CEO.
In this context, minimal power consumption becomes crucial for edge devices, and the entire self-reinforcing positive loop depends on the the ability to further reduce power consumption, accordng to Caulfield.
When it comes to the automotive chip market, the GF chief executive expects a massive increase in demand. In response, GlobalFoundries has significantly expanded its capacity. Its Dresden fab, for example, has boosted its capacity from 300,000 wafers per year to 850,000 wafers per year in the past three years, and the share of automotive chips in the Dresden fab has increased from 1% to 20%. Manfred Horstman, Managing Director of GlobalFoundries Dresden, indicated that "automotive is at the center of our thinking."
Though smart mobile devices remained the main source of GF sales in second-quarter 2023, amounting to 42% of revenue share at US$783 million, revenues from automotive and IoT sectors were US$245 million and US$358 million, respectively, representing a year-on-year growth of 199% and 3%. GF also saw the sales contribution of the auto sector growing from 4% in second-quarter 2022 to 13% in second-quarter 2023, while that of IoT grew from 17% to 19% in the same period.
At the summit, GF also unveiled its 22FDX platform, based on 22nm FD-SOI technology, calling it a strategic response to the growing demand for better power efficiency and top-tier performance in IoT and automotive applications
According to GF, the 22FDX platform includes features like ultra-low power memory and advanced temperature-resistant capabilities to ensure the safety and reliability of vehicle electronics systems. For IoT applications, GF emphasized several advancements on the platform, including 0.5pA/cell memories and ultra-low retention leakage flops to minimize power in sleep mode; 0.4V standard cells libraries and memories with 30% lower power savings; and an expanded suite of devices that provide greater than 20% noise performance, up to 70% higher Q-factor, and lower switching loss to reduce analog power and area.
Specifically for the auto industry, GF also introduced 22FDX+ AutoPro150, extending the capabilities of 22FDX+ for use in automotive up to 150°C with corner tightened standard cell libraries and optimized SRAM compilers to boost chip performance by 10% or reduce power consumption by up to 20%. According to GF, it also contains novel SRAM bitcells and compilers that are optimized with reverse body-biasing - a capability only possible in FDSOI technology - and can deliver up to 60% leakage reduction at 150°C junction temperature.
Participants of the technology summit included Karsten Schnake, Board Member for Procurement at Škoda Auto & Head of Project COMPASS at Volkswagen. At the event, as reported by Elektroniknet, Schnake also highlighted the long-term supply security challenge faced by German automakers. "We can't leave this to the tier suppliers, and therefore we must understand the semiconductors and our partners, and create transparency in the supply chain."
