GlobalFoundries (GF), a semiconductor manufacturing company, announced on Monday that it has completed its acquisition of Singapore-based chipmaker Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF) to accelerate silicon photonics development and strengthen its global manufacturing footprint as both companies share a focus on innovation and customer-driven design.
In a press release, GF said the deal will leverage AMF’s 15 years of manufacturing expertise in long-haul optical communications, computing, LiDAR and sensing on AMF’s 200mm platform in Singapore with plans to scale to 300mm as market demands grow.
It will bring together AMF’s manufacturing assets, extensive intellectual property and skilled talent to significantly expand GF’s silicon photonics technology and establish the company as the largest silicon photonics pure-play foundry by revenue.
GF’s CEO Tim Breen, said, “Acquiring AMF enables GF to deliver an expanded, differentiated roadmap for pluggable transceivers and co-packaged optics, while accelerating growth of photonics into adjacent markets such as automotive and quantum computing.”
“Silicon photonics technology is essential for AI infrastructure. As data moves faster and workloads grow more complex, the ability to move information with greater speed, precision and power efficiency is now fundamental to AI data centers and advanced telecom networks.”
“AMF and GF share a vision of innovation and close customer partnerships to deliver differentiated solutions,” said Jagadish CV, CEO of AMF. “With complementary technology portfolios, we are proud to join forces with a trusted manufacturer with global reach, and together, look forward to advancing silicon photonics technology for a broader range of markets and customers.”
GF plans to establish a silicon photonics research and development center of excellence (CoE) in Singapore. This CoE will partner with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore’s lead public sector R&D agency, to advance GF’s innovation roadmap by focusing on next-generation materials for ultra-fast data transfer at 400Gbps speed. This collaboration will enhance the company’s silicon photonics platform to provide high-performance and secure data transfer solutions.
Silicon photonics technology uses light instead of electrical signals to move data since copper interconnects have performance and efficiency limits. This is a key enabler for AI-driven data centers as increasing workloads require ultra-fast, low-power data movement. The AMF acquisition adds Asia-based scale and diversification which helps to improve supply-chain resilience and enable customer multilocation sourcing options.