In fact, the IC world must not rush to 450-mm wafer fabs, said Thomas Sonderman, vice president of manufacturing systems and technology at the foundry upstart, which is also ramping up its 45-nm process.

''The rush to 450-mm suggests a lack of ideas for improving fab productivity," Sonderman said in a statement. "At GlobalFoundries, we see a tremendous amount of headroom left in the 300-mm process.''

As reported, Intel, TSMC and Samsung are separately pushing for the advent of 450-mm ''prototype'' fabs by 2012. Some believe 450-mm fabs will never happen, saying the R&D costs are too expensive.

Sematech is spearheading the 450-mm effort. But it is unlikely that Sematech and its members will meet its goals by 2012. Some equipment will be ready. Others won't.

GlobalFoundries (Sunnyvale, Calif.) is the silicon foundry venture created by the spinoff of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s manufacturing operations and backed by an investment from Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi.

The firm has a fab in Germany. It also plans a $4.5 billion, 300-mm fab in Malta in N.Y.'s Saratoga County that is expected to come online in 2012 with 35,000 wafer starts per month at full capacity.

It claims to have made a rapid transition to the 45-nm process node. All wafer starts in Fab 1 in Germany have now been converted to 45-nm--''a process that is proving to deliver few defects, low leakage, and high performance,'' according to the company.