Globalfoundries plans to boost production
At Volkswagen, Daimler and Audi, production has recently come to a standstill time and again: there are not enough chips for the increasingly silicon-heavy vehicle electronics. What sometimes seems like a specific problem of the supposedly cumbersome and occasionally hubristic German car industry, in fact affects vehicle production in other countries just as much. The market research institute IHS Markit has计算的数字. According to these, in the first quarter of 2021 alone, the production of a good 670,000 vehicles worldwide will be affected in some form by the chip shortage. The supply problems will hit the Chinese industry hardest, where 250,000 fewer cars than planned can probably be built in this period because of the “chip famine”. The overstretching of global semiconductor production is reflected in massive delivery times – for MCUs, for example, an orderer must now allow for a delivery time of at least 26 weeks.
瓶颈很大程度上可能是由于仅几个工厂和铸造厂的汽车芯片生产浓度。根据IHS Markit的说法，全世界需要的汽车半导体中有70％是由一家公司（即台湾TSMC）生产的。
Now contract manufacturer Globalfoundries wants to seize the moment and increase the output of its fab in Dresden to one million wafer starts per year – about two and a half times the current capacity. The German-language industry blogoiger.depublished an interview with Manfred Horstmann, the head of Globalfoundries’ Dresden branch. In it, Horstmann confirmed these plans. The increased demand from the automotive industry will in some cases – by no means all – lead to concrete orders, Horstmann said. GlobalFoundries produces semiconductors for GPS and radar systems for use in cars, for example.
However, the car industry will have to be patient for a while yet, because GlobalFoudries already dropped out of the race for ever smaller chip structures years ago and has instead perfected its 22FDX production technology with structure widths of 22 nm under the slogan “More than Moore”. Horstmann is not planning to re-enter this race either; instead, he intends to include new applications such as artificial intelligence and, in particular, neuromorphic circuits in his product range – circuits that will probably be in greater demand in the automotive industry in the future, but which will not solve the current supply dilemma.
霍斯特曼的策略是利用增加的需求来提高其工厂的能力。为此，他想建造新的生产建筑并进一步提高自动化水平 - 在德累斯顿工厂已经很高。该公司不想对投资金额发表评论，但媒体报道提到“超过10亿欧元”。在这种情况下，GlobalFoundries希望从欧盟的IPCEI项目中获得资金。这实现了一个相当长的目标，即减少欧洲对亚洲芯片行业的依赖。
So it will probably take a few more years before production picks up speed at Globalfoundries. And the car industry will have to continue to exercise patience for a while.
More information:https://ihsmarkit.com/Info/0221/semiconductor-shortage.html
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