New DOD contract and understaffed post layoffs and attrition. Have fun bringing those tools out of idle boys... lol
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Onward Team
Tom
Defense contractors spread the workaround to all the states so these ridiculous defense budgets pass to make themselves rich. Enjoy the scraps boys, You're the ones paying for it with your taxes.
Great news. Folks get ready for some more choice Olive Oil this holiday season.
GF will drop the ball on this like they do everything else. By the way, with that 3 billion dollar contract, did they share the live with their employees? Nice raise? Some extra stock grants? Free ice cream?
The article doesn't say how much will be built in each fab. I would guess more of the revenue would come from wafers built in Malta in newer nodes but not sure. I guess over time we will see. This is good for manufacturing, but the biggest issue GF has is other than 22FDX they offer nothing that is industry leading and when you don't offer leading edge your price point gets pushed down and your profit gets pushed down. GF has lost or gotten rid of so much development technology and outsourced those resources to newbies in low-cost geos that they have no chance of being best in class or what we used to call "differentiated" offerings. The current SLT has lowered costs so much at the expense of having nothing industry leading other than 22FDX that GF is no longer a differentiated foundry. I don't see GF succeeding long term unless they clean house in the SLT.
Nothing to worry about. We are lucky to have a CEO ad his senior leadership team who have managed to raise failure to an art form….
Here's the link:
https://vtdigger.org/2023/09/21/defense-department-awards-contract-worth-up-to-3-1b-to-globalfoundries/
@1jyv, I did not hear this was for Fab 9, if so then the following are aprox numbers. A typically 200mm wafer costs $1k-$2k range so let's use $1k/wafer. $3.1B over 10 years is $310M per year, this would be about 850 wafers/day. Fab 9 is something like 1800 or so wafers/day so this would be 40-50% of Fab 9 loading. If this was all for Fab 9 this would be great news for the Vermont site, they might not sell it off after all, however, there is still a huge asset utilization problem on the site. They are trying to control the power costs through being their own power provider which is good but there are many buildings and much of the campus which is just a ghost town, and this adds to the overall burden rate which takes away from the net profit for that fab. If this is true, the full amount is for Fab 9 then that will be great news for that site!!!
@idld,
Source in VT reported, that $3.1B is for Fab9, not for Malta ?
Could you redo you good math for 200mm wafers?
Considering they just laid off most of their Talent Acquisition team I'm sure they will struggle to bring in talent as they ramp up.
Malta fab current wafer starts <500
Current staffing is barely supporting idled state. When they bring up the rest of the fleet from idle, it's going to be a mess.i suspect attrition rate will continue. Words out on GF,they f-cked over a lot people in layoff. I think another of industry people will steer clear of working for them.
$3.1B over 10 years is $310M/year. Now if we assume a 300mm wafer which costs somewhere between $5K-$10K per wafer, let's assume low side $5K/wafer then this would be aprox 62K wafers per year, which is aprox 170 wafers per day. Of course, we don't know what the details of the financial agreement are but a small fab like Malta this can help fill a fab. Not sure if Malta is around 1000 wafers per day these days but if it is this would provide 17% loading, rough numbers. This certainly will help loading in Malta.
The biggest issue GF faces is what to do with 200mm fabs in SGP and Vermont and what loads them in future? I suspect over time GF will unload the Vermont fab since it is not a business-friendly state and the overall site costs are very high, huge number of rundown buildings, 9500-person site with less than 2500 people working there puts a lot of financial overhead/burden on that site.
Agreed. At first blush this seems like great news but now the heat is on…. Pressure to produce and we all know what’s going behind the orange curtain. I hope this goes well but reality and our past precedent and shows we will mess this up somehow on the big stage with spot line right on us.
It's over a 10 period. I have absolute faith the GF will sqaunder and waste the opportunity. If you think you're understaffed and overworked now, just wait. Lol
You won't to actually produce many chips with the way the government overpays for everything. Government will expect 1/4 the number of chips that a private company would for that $3B.