GLOBALFOUNDRIES and IBM announced an agreement to jointly manufacture advanced computer chips at both companies’ semiconductor fabs in New York’s “Tech Valley.” The new products recently began initial production at IBM’s 300mm fab in East Fishkill and GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ Fab 8 in Saratoga County, and are planned to ramp to volume production in the second half of 2012.

The chips are the first silicon produced at GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ newest and most advanced manufacturing facility. The chips are based on IBM’s 32nm, Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology, which was jointly developed with GLOBALFOUNDRIES and other members of IBM’s Process Development Alliance with early research at the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. The technology vastly improves microprocessor performance in multi-core designs and speeds the movement of graphics in gaming, networking, and other image intensive, multi-media applications.

Source: HPC Wire