GloFo abandons China fab

Globalfoundries has filed papers to officially close its FD-SOI fab in Chengdu, China and lay off its 74 employees.

GloFo and the town of Chengdu had a jv to build a $10 billion 300mm fab for 22nm FD-SOI.

The plan was to  begin production of mainstream process technologies in 2018 and then focus on manufacturing 22FD-SOI, with volume production expected to start in 2019.

The fab was never brought online. In June 2018, GloFo announced layoffs and suspension of recruitment. In October 2018, GloFo stopped investing in the fab.

By early 2019, the company had taken out the manufacturing equipment.

There was speculation that a buyer might be found – Tower was mentioned – but in the end the only way out was to kill the project.