GlobalFoundries announced the establishment of Avera Semiconductor, a subsidiary dedicated to providing custom silicon solutions. Avera Semi will leverage deep ties with GF to deliver ASIC offerings on 14/12nm and more mature technologies while providing clients new capabilities and access to alternate foundry processes at 7nm and beyond.

Avera Semi is built upon an unrivaled legacy of ASIC expertise, tapping into a world-class team that has executed more than 2,000 complex designs in its 25-year history. With more than 850 employees, annual revenues in excess of $500 million, and over $3 billion in 14nm designs in execution, Avera Semi is well positioned to serve clients developing products across a wide range of markets, including wired and wireless networking, data centers and storage, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and aerospace and defense.
 

The new company is led by Kevin O’Buckley, a leader in the ASIC business since joining GF as part of the acquisition of IBM Microelectronics in 2015. Previously, he spent nearly 20 years at IBM in a variety of roles spanning both technical and executive leadership positions.
 

“I couldn’t imagine a better time to launch a new venture focused on delivering custom ASIC solutions,” O’Buckley said. “Data traffic and bandwidth demands have exploded, and next-generation systems for cloud and communications must deliver more performance and handle more complexity than ever before. Avera Semi has the right combination of expertise and technology to help our clients design and build high-performance, highly optimized semiconductor solutions.”
 

“Arm has a long history of collaborating with the team building Avera Semi to enhance PPA and bring innovative solutions to market,” said Drew Henry, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “As the needs for compute requirements continue to evolve and diversify, we look forward to joining Avera’s capabilities and technologies with Arm Neoverse solutions and physical design IP to deliver unique value to a broad customer base.”

“Synopsys’ long history of collaboration with GF has enabled us to deliver a broad portfolio of high-quality DesignWare™ IP on a range of GF processes,” said John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP at Synopsys. “We look forward to continuing this success with Avera Semi to provide designers with the necessary IP for their next-generation, high-performance SoC designs on advanced FinFET processes.”

Avera Semi offers clients a range of capabilities to enable end-to-end silicon solutions:
 

• ASIC offerings on both leading-edge and proven process technologies, including a newly established foundry partnership on 7nm
• A rich IP portfolio, including high-speed SerDes, high-performance embedded TCAMs, ARM® cores and performance and density-optimized embedded SRAMs
• A comprehensive, production-proven design methodology that builds on a strong record of first-time-right results to help reduce development costs and time-to-market
• Advanced packaging options to increase bandwidth, eliminate I/O bottlenecks, and reduce memory area, latency and power
• Flexible ASIC business engagement models that give clients the ability to supplement in-house resources with the level of support needed from experienced chip design, methodology, test and packaging teams