On July 24, the foundry startup will break ground on the fab. As previously reported, it 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.

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. It officially opened for business in March.

In the meantime, the company is ramping up its existing fabs in Dresden, Germany, which were once part of AMD. As expected, the company is going after the leading-edge foundry business, thereby competing against UMC, TSMC, and, to some degree, its fab partners in Chartered and Samsung. GlobalFoundries is part of IBM Corp.'s ''fab club,'' which includes Chartered, IBM, Samsung and others.

''We feel we have an opportunity'' despite the downturn, said Tom Sonderman, vice president of manufacturing systems and technology at GlobalFoundries. ''Customers are looking for choices at the leading-edge.''

At present, the company has one fab, dubbed Module 1. It is processing 45-nm wafers, based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology and immersion lithography. Its only customer is AMD.

For critical layers, GlobalFoundries' main lithography vendor is ASML Holding NV. ''We are also engaged with Nikon and Canon,'' Sonderman said. For low-k at 45-nm, the company is using Applied Materials Inc.'s Black Diamond films.

In an interview at Semicon West, Sonderman outlined GlobalFoundries' roadmap: