Peter Clarke EE Times (02/04/2010 7:23 AM EST)

LONDON — GlobalFoundries Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) the foundry chip maker backed by Abu Dhabi, has said it wants to take 30 percent of the foundry market within three years, according to a Bloomberg report that cited the CEO of its lead investor as its source.

"Am I setting very aggressive targets? Yes. We need to be a $5 billion company in the next two to three years," a Bloomberg report quoted Ibrahim Ajami, chief executive officer of Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC), as saying. ATIC is the government-owned investment company that has a majority stake in GlobalFoundries.

Unfortunately, $5 billion in annual sales won't quite get GlobalFoundries to 30 percent and it will be up against a dominant market leader in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC). In 2009 TSMC was ranked the top foundry with about 45 percent of a market worth about $20 billion. It was three times larger than its nearest rival, United Microelectronics Corp. That market is expected to grow strongly in 2010 and 2011.

GlobalFoundies, which acquired Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing late in 2009, appeared in fifth spot. The combined sales of Chartered and GlobalFoundries would have been just over $2.6 billion in 2009, enough to put the combined company's sales only just behind second-ranked UMC.

GlobalFoundries has announced that it is working with Qualcomm, STMicroelectronics and ARM Holdings plc as well as Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which remains a shareholder having provided original manufacturing process technology.

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