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22 Jan 2025
Major investment to on-shore packaging, test, and assembly capabilities at Malta, New York, location.
Chip manufacturing giant GlobalFoundries has announced plans to spend upwards of $700 million establishing a new silicon photonics facility at its existing upstate New York location.
Headquartered in Malta, just north of Albany, GlobalFoundries says it plans to invest $575 million at the New York Advanced Packaging and Photonics Center, which will carry out advanced packaging, assembly, and testing functions.
An additional $186 million investment has been earmarked for research and development activity over the next decade, with those efforts expected to create approximately one hundred new full-time jobs over the next five years.
CHIPS Act funding
GlobalFoundries said that the state of New York will be providing up to $20 million in additional support for the new center, on top of a previously announced $550 million from the New York State Green CHIPS program.
The US Department of Commerce is providing up to $75 million in direct funding to support the center, supplementing a previous award to the company under the Biden Administration’s CHIPS and Science Act.
Last November GlobalFoundries revealed that it would receive up to $1.5 billion from the CHIPS Act funding scheme to both help it expand in New York and to modernize its Vermont facility - although at the time silicon photonics was not mentioned explicitly.
The new silicon photonics center will expand the firm’s advanced packaging capabilities, where bare chips are converted into individual packages ready for end-product use, thus providing customers with devices made entirely in the US.
Other recipients of major CHIPS Act funding include TSMC and Intel, with the broad aim of re-establishing the US as a premier location for chip production amid stiff competition from manufacturers in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and, increasingly, China.
Fully on-shored production
As GlobalFoundries points out, the vast majority of today’s advanced packaging activity takes place in Asia.
It said that the “first-of-its-kind” center would enable semiconductors to be securely manufactured, processed, packaged, and tested entirely onshore in the US - meeting growing demand for silicon photonics devices wanted for applications in AI, automotive, aerospace and defense, and communications.
“Growth in AI is driving the adoption of silicon photonics and 3D and heterogeneously integrated chips to meet power, bandwidth, and density requirements in data centers and edge devices,” announced the firm.
“Silicon photonics chips are also positioned to address power and performance needs in automotive, communications, radar, and other critical infrastructure applications.”
Company CEO Thomas Caulfield added: “The New York Advanced Packaging and Photonics Center will be unique in our industry and will play a vital role in the continued growth of the Empire State’s world-class semiconductor manufacturing and innovation ecosystem.”
New capabilities are set to include full turn-key advanced packaging, bump, assembly, and testing for aerospace and defense customers under GlobalFoundries’ “Trusted Foundry” accreditation, meaning that chips destined for sensitive applications will never leave the US during production.
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