TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES  |
MANUFACTURING SERVICES

The new foundry company builds on a philosophy that leading-edge manufacturing operations must be both highly efficient and extremely flexible to deliver results to the fullest. The company is committed to providing differentiated manufacturing services rooted in the values of speed, accuracy, and agility to help ensure it is consistently providing customers with the right technologies and solutions, at the right time. This customer-centric manufacturing model is the result of decades of refinement under the AMD banner.

Already an industry leader in fab cycle time, The Foundry Company’s operations continue to undergo an ambitious transformation which applies “Lean” manufacturing principles, gleaned from leaders in the automotive industry like Toyota and Porsche, to complex semiconductor fabrication for ultimate efficiency and responsiveness to customer needs. By reducing production time for a single wafer, Lean techniques will enable the new foundry company to adjust production to match customer demand while limiting risk, reducing waste, and accelerating time-to-market for customers.

Lean builds on The Foundry Company’s patented production automation capabilities called Automated Precision Manufacturing (APM). This unique set of technologies, logic, business processes and employee skill sets creates full synchronization within and across fabs. APM helps reduce turnaround time, increase productivity, provide maximum order flexibility, and allow for more rapid transition to new technologies in high volumes.

The new foundry company will deliver these advanced services and technologies through its existing facilities in Dresden, Germany as well as expanded capacity in both Dresden and a new manufacturing operation planned for Saratoga County, New York

The combination of global innovation collaboration, advanced operational capabilities and high-volume manufacturing scale, coupled with years of experience, will enable the new foundry company to offer customers an array of manufacturing services, and a level of customer service, unmatched in the contract semiconductor manufacturing industry.

Lean Techniques

Pushing operational excellence to new heights, the new foundry company will benefit from its Lean operations aimed at directly meeting customer needs.

Since the development of AMD’s first fab automation technologies, AMD has been a catalyst for change and improvement in semiconductor manufacturing. Building on its unique Automated Precision Manufacturing (APM) technologies, the Lean initiatives promise reduced production time, enhanced responsiveness to customer needs, and greater operational efficiency and flexibility.

Lean initiatives apply principles pioneered at Toyota and honed by leading manufacturers such as Porsche to reduce the time and cost of semiconductor production by squeezing idle time out of the manufacturing process.

Today, semiconductor manufacturers move wafers through the production line in a lot of approximately 25 wafers. However, many tools can only process a handful of wafers at a time. At any time, up to 32% of wafers in production are waiting to be processed. The Lean initiative aims to reduce idle waiting and the total time it takes a wafer to make it through a production line.

Lean initiatives rely on intelligent design of fab layout to also reduce transportation time and streamline wafer movement. Fab 30 saw a 15.5% reduction in cycle time and 10% increase in Operational Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) from the implementation of such lean concepts.

Already recognized by SEMI for industry-leading cycle times, The Foundry Company’s ability to further reduce production time and flexibly shift production to meet customer demand will serve as a key competitive advantage for the new foundry company.

Automated Precision Manufacturing (APM)

The new foundry company will make services available to customers that are based on an entirely new and differentiated manufacturing model called Automated Precision Manufacturing (APM). Acting as the central nervous system of our fabs, APM maximizes constantly monitors and adjusts processing of in-line wafers to ensure consistently high yields -- even when introducing new process technologies

Over the years, it has become standard practice to automate the movement of materials within a fab. This technology is important, but it’s only half the equation. It’s far more valuable to closely integrate this automated material movement with advanced automated decision-making. APM provides this integration, and the complex data analysis required to effectively achieve it, enabling synchronization and automation within fabs that is unmatched in the industry.

This sophisticated and highly integrated data infrastructure constantly monitors the health of microprocessors in production by collecting and analyzing information from the tool-sets as wafers enter and exit them for processing. Using real-time analysis of this data, APM automatically and consistently modifies the processing recipe used at each tool to ensure the resulting products operate according to targeted specifications and defects are minimized. APM also controls the path each group of wafers takes for processing in order to ensure optimum production efficiencies.

Top benefits of this automated control include faster time to mature yields on new technologies and the ability to rapidly modify the functionality of products already in production in order to closely align fab output with current customer requirements. More specifically, APM will allow the new foundry company to offer customers manufacturing services that deliver numerous unique capabilities and benefits, including:

  • Products that deviate from performance targets can be automatically brought back into alignment through downstream processing corrections.
  • Speed grades of products already in production can be adjusted up or down using automated recipe changes in order to rapidly align production output with current customer needs.
  • The new foundry company can efficiently introduce submicron, transistor-level improvements into production as often as once per quarter to consistently optimize product performance and power-efficiency.
  • Dozens of product types and speed grades can be manufactured in a single fab, using the same tool sets and production lines, for tremendous manufacturing efficiency.
  • Running research and development wafers in line with actual product wafers, on the same tools and equipment without interrupting volume production, which is a key driver of the ability to make rapid technology transitions.

Continued enhancement of this unique framework of automation technologies is aimed at fulfilling one simple idea: ensure the new foundry company will continue to consistently deliver the technologies and services that customers need, when they need them.

Manufacturing Operations in Dresden, Germany:

With two state-of-the-art semiconductor production facilities, Fab 36 and Fab 38 with a total investment to date of more than $6 billion and about 2,800 world-class engineers, technicians, and specialists, Dresden is the cornerstone of The Foundry Company’s manufacturing operations.

The Dresden manufacturing sites are recognized throughout the industry as among the most successful leading-edge semiconductor production facilities in the world and represent one of the biggest international investments in Germany.

Fab 36

Fab 36 is the new foundry company’s primary 300mm wafer fabrication facility, producing its microprocessor product portfolio using advanced 45nm and 65nm technology. With Fab 36, AMD constructed a facility destined to become a standard-bearer in the world of fabrication and manufacturing.

AMD Fab 36 implements AMD's Automated Precision Manufacturing for ultimate efficiency. The facility employs approximately 1,000 employees. Located in Dresden, a city at the forefront of semiconductor technology, Fab 36 represents a giant step forward in the evolution of manufacturing capabilities.

Fab 30 Converts to 300mm Production as Fab 38

Fab 30 is the second of the new foundry company’s fabrication facilities, also located in Dresden, Germany. Since production began at Fab 30 in 2000, the facility has been one of the world’s most advanced facilities producing microprocessors on 200mm wafers. The fab has consistently been ranked as best-in-class across a growing number of SEMATECH benchmarks.

As part of the new foundry company’s announced expansion plans, Fab 30 will be converting to 300 millimeter wafer production. Renamed Fab 38, this newest fabrication facility in Dresden will come online through a major transformation and join Fab 36 in delivering significant capacity growth with 300mm wafer production.

New 300mm Fab at the Luther Forest Technology Campus, New York

Chip-makers around the world will have access to the scale, global footprint, operational efficiency and technology leadership of the Foundry Company. A cornerstone of this model will be the construction and operation of the first 300mm semiconductor manufacturing facility designed for 32 nm technologies at the Luther Forest Technology Campus (LFTC) in, Saratoga County, New York.

In 2006, after a global site selection process, AMD and the State of New York have agreed upon an economic development package, or Grant Disbursement Agreement (GDA), establishing a two-year window from July 2007 to July 2009 for AMD to commit building a new fab in Upstate New York. Since that time, AMD has worked to develop an innovative site development plan for the new state-of-the-art fab.

With the announcement of The Foundry Company by AMD and ATIC, the project will now move forward with a construction plan as regulatory approvals, transaction closings and the incentives transfer are completed.

Construction is expected to begin in 2009 and is expected to be completed in roughly two years, with production beginning in the 2011 timeframe.

Creating Jobs for Upstate New York
The Foundry Company plans to start with a core team of locally-based employees and leverage the expertise from the highly successful Dresden, Germany manufacturing facility or “fab”. As the fab continues to increase production, The Foundry Company expects to draw the majority of the growing workforce from local communities. The region’s highly skilled and educated local workforce is a major factor in why Luther Forest was selected as the ideal site for a new, leading-edge fab:

  • The new fab at LFTC will create more than 1,400 high-tech manufacturing jobs in New York, projected to have an annual payroll of more than $88 million in 2012.
  • The new fab will spur the creation of thousands of additional construction and indirect jobs in the greater Saratoga County region.
  • In all, the combined economic of all of this activity is likely to total approximately 2,800 additional, long-term jobs, as well as 1,600 additional jobs during the construction of the plant, with corresponding payrolls of $148 million and $106 million annually.
  • The new fab is a key piece of Tech Valley and the overall economic growth and future of a region that has seen significant downturns in recent years:
    • In the past decade, New York has seen 30.6 percent of the state’s manufacturing jobs lost. (The Public Policy Institute of New York State, Inc.)
    • Over the past year, New York State has seen a 3.3 percent decrease in manufacturing jobs – or 18,300 jobs. (The Public Policy Institute of New York State, Inc.)

New Fab Project Timeline:

2006

  • 6/23/06: Governor Pataki, Senator Joe Bruno, Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver and AMD’s CEO Ruiz announce plans for multi-billion dollar 300 mm semiconductor manufacturing plant
  • 12/22/06: AMD signs Grant Disbursement Agreement for new Fab option

2007

  • 1/23/07: AMD holds first in a series of community visits to present plan and communicate with local stakholders about the project
  • 5/3/07: AMD presents initial design review sketches to community at the Saratoga Economic Development Corporation’s Annual Dinner
  • 5/14/07: AMD participates in the Summit in Tech Valley
  • 5/22/07: AMD participates in the Circa ’07 conference at the College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering Albany NanoTech Complex, University of Albany, State University of New York
  • 8/14/07: AMD participates in the 2007 Economic Summit: Entrepreneurship and Growth in Upstate New York event hosted by U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand
  • 12/12/07: AMD secures option on property within the Luther Forest Technology Campus (LFTC)
  • 12/18/07: The Fab 4X project designated a “regionally significant project.” This allows AMD to become eligible for the Empire Zone benefits approved by the State of New York in the GDA

2008

  • 2/25/08: AMD begins working with local stakeholders on the public regulatory process needed to review AMD’s project plans
  • 8/25/08: public regulatory process completed
  • 8/27/08: LFTC site visit with Hector Ruiz and senior AMD executives
  • 9/5/08: AMD to participate in 2008 Economic Summit hosted by U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand
  • 10/6/08: AMD sponsors Click’08 and participates on workforce development panel
  • 10/7/08: AMD and ATIC announce The Foundry Company will begin construction of the new Fab in Saratoga County, NY upon the transfer of incentives