GlobalFoundries hadn’t yet broken ground when we visited the site of its future New York fab last month. Today, the firm says it has sent a "formal commitment letter" to the State of New York, and it now intends to kick off site development on June 15. "Official groundbreaking" will follow at some point in July.
The foundry firm says it has also done the following:
- Completed the Development Agreement with the Town of Malta and the Town of Stillwater. Through the Development Agreement the company will contribute $5 million, including $1 million towards the creation of a 32-acre public recreation field complex. The remaining $4 million will be used to establish two independent foundations designed to provide dedicated funding for future community enrichment programs in each town.
- Authorized M+W Zander to award the site development bid. The site development work, also referred to as "clearing and grubbing," will begin on Monday, June 15 and will prepare the site for full-scale construction, including the official groundbreaking ceremony planned for July.
- Scheduled the closing of the transaction to purchase 223 acres of land from LFTC for Wednesday, June 10.
At the same time, the State of New York is supposed to start giving out bonds to GlobalFoundries for "the payment of reimbursements and incentives." The firm’s latest announcement repeats that Fab 2 ought to create 1,400 "direct" manufacturing jobs as well as 5,000 "indirect" jobs in the area.
Fab 2 should start volume production in 2012 at the 32nm node. AMD could well remain GlobalFoundries’ biggest customer in that time frame, but the manufacturing firm’s mix of bulk silicon, high-k, and silicon-on-insulator processes will let it secure potentially meaty orders from other customers.
