GlobalFoundries Details FDX Fusion Chip Technology and Targets 2030 for High-Volume Production
A new executive interview explains how the chipmaker intends to deliver competitive performance without EUV lithography, while revealing more about manufacturing costs and production timing.
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GlobalFoundries has provided new technical and manufacturing details about FDX Fusion, its next-generation semiconductor process designed to offer performance comparable to 7nm-class technologies without relying on extreme ultraviolet lithography. In an interview published by Tom's Hardware on November 6, Sudipto Bose, vice president of GlobalFoundries' FD-SOI business unit, described the company's approach to transistor design, manufacturing economics, and the transition toward commercial production.
FDX Fusion builds on fully depleted silicon-on-insulator technology and uses planar transistors rather than FinFET structures. GlobalFoundries is targeting performance and power characteristics associated with 7nm-class processes while offering logic density closer to the 8nm class. Bose said the platform is intended to provide approximately 2.2 times the digital gate density of the company's existing 22FDX technology. These are company targets and descriptions, not independently measured production results.
Avoiding EUV lithography is central to the manufacturing strategy. According to Bose, the approach should reduce mask-related expenses and allow customers to pursue more cost-effective chip development than conventional 6nm or 7nm manufacturing. However, FDX Fusion will still require new production equipment, and GlobalFoundries has not disclosed final manufacturing costs. The company intends to use its Dresden facility in Germany for production.
The interview also clarifies the production roadmap. Bose identified 2028 as the target for initial customer production, while 2030 is the company's goal for high-volume manufacturing. The distinction matters because customer production does not necessarily indicate mature yields or commercial-scale output. Bose emphasized that reaching the later milestone will depend on the first applications and customers adopting the technology.
GlobalFoundries sees potential demand from automotive radar, wireless connectivity, industrial systems, edge AI, and certain data-center communications components. The company is not presenting FDX Fusion as a direct replacement for the densest processors manufactured on leading-edge FinFET processes. The newly published interview adds concrete technical and scheduling details to the platform's earlier announcement, but its eventual competitiveness remains dependent on successful process development and customer adoption.