Dresden chip plant: GlobalFoundries plans 7nm-class technology
Topping-out for the €1.1bn expansion: by the end of 2028 Dresden is set to make over a million wafers a year. The new FDX Fusion platform targets cars, industry and defence.
Archive image · Photo: Fensterblick. / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
US chipmaker GlobalFoundries has reached the topping-out milestone for the expansion of its Dresden plant, on schedule and on budget according to the company. The €1.1 billion SPRINT project is meant to lift annual capacity to more than one million 300mm wafers by the end of 2028, up from as many as 950,000 today, making Dresden Europe's largest foundry site. The build is backed by the EU, the German government and the state of Saxony under the European Chips Act.
The company also unveiled FDX Fusion, a platform to be developed and manufactured in Dresden. Based on FD-SOI, it is designed to deliver digital performance comparable to the 7-nanometre class while combining analogue, radio-frequency and embedded memory functions on one chip. Target markets are cars, aerospace, industrial electronics and defence – what GlobalFoundries calls 'physical AI', meaning AI built into machines and devices.
There is a catch: development of FDX Fusion depends on Berlin approving the Dresden plant's participation in the EU's IPCEI programme for advanced semiconductor technologies. For customers with strict security needs, GlobalFoundries also plans to offer manufacturing and data flows that stay entirely within Europe.