A love affair with silicon

A love affair with silicon
PHOTO: A love affair with silicon
Ajit Manocha, chief executive officer (CEO) of GlobalFoundries.

Ajit Manocha likes to say that he eats, drinks and dreams silicon. While for most people that would seem a curious fascination, for Mr Manocha, who is CEO of GlobalFoundries, (GF), the world's second largest independent semiconductor foundry, that's par for the course.

A chemist by training, he's been working with silicon ever since he left university and joined Bell Labs as a research scientist.

Launched in March 2009, GF is the world's first full-service semiconductor foundry with a global footprint. It has operations in Singapore, Germany and the US.

Singapore is a major operations centre for the company. Out of its eight fabrication (fab) plants, as many as six are located in Singapore. The remaining two are in Dresden, Germany and Malta in New York state. These sites are supported by a global network of R&D (research and development), design enablement, and customer support centres in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Interestingly, Mr Manocha had no plans to become CEO of what is arguably one of the fastest growing foundries in the world. After quite an eventful career in which he held several important posts in the semiconductor industry around the world, he had decided, in 2010, to slow down and spend more time with his family in California.

"Being around 55, I wanted to rediscover my family. However, my end goal in life was never to retire but to work on multiple company boards as an adviser."

One of the board roles that came to Mr Manocha around that time was from ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Company). Based in Abu Dhabi, ATIC is an investment company in the high-technology sector, owned by Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi.

ATIC and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) created GF in 2009 and it was then the world's third largest independent foundry. Later that year, ATIC acquired Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing which was then the world's second largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry. In January 2010, GF officially integrated operations with Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, and since that time has functioned as one company under the GF brand.

"I was part of the ATIC family since 2009 and I was also on a few other boards," recalls Mr Manocha.

From interim to permanent

In 2011 GF was having problems with its Dresden fab in Germany. "Dresden was a legacy fab for GF and we did not do a good job in transforming a microprocessor fab to a multi-product, multi-customer fab," Mr Manocha says. "GF's image was hurting, as we had committed to the customers to ramp up their volume from the Dresden fab."

Since Mr Manocha had extensive experience in running fabs in Europe on account of his leadership days in Philips Semiconductor, the ATIC CEO asked him to take charge of the situation. "He arm-twisted me into taking up an interim CEO's role in GF till they found a permanent CEO. However, after two or three months, the ATIC board decided that there was no need to do a search and that I should be made the permanent CEO."

"One of the reasons why he probably took the decision to make me the permanent CEO was because he had already seen signals of a turnaround at Dresden.

"But he knew that my hands were tied because the new management hires that I had identified did not want to come onboard before they knew who was the new CEO.

In November of 2011, he became the full-time CEO.

"This went against my plan of just spending the rest of my working life serving on different boards and not taking on a hands-on job. However, I'm glad that I took up this job as this is a great challenge and gives me the opportunity to reshape the semiconductor industry," says Mr Manocha.

"GF has all the ingredients to become the best foundry in the world and I find this a great chance for me to create history."

Once at the helm on a full-time basis, Mr Manocha wasted no time in bringing in a new management team. Within the first 29 days, 25 of the top 40 people in the company were replaced. And by Jan 31, 2012, 35 of the top 60 people were out of the company.

"This gave me a totally new management team which has a very hands-on and foundry type DNA. They have done a wonderful job and now Dresden is operating with fantastic results. We have 100 per cent on time delivery and a fully loaded fab with yields that are best in class."

He also notes that the company's new fab in Malta, New York is the most advanced fab in the world. "It's a greenfield project making a very advanced product with state-of-the-art technology... We are firing on all cylinders."

In the second quarter of this year, GF's revenues exceeded US$1 billion (S$1.23 billion). Before that, in the fourth quarter of 2011, it became the second largest foundry in the world by revenue. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is the world's biggest foundry.

According to an iSuppli research report, while the semiconductor industry is expected to grow at 5 per cent per annum, the foundry industry is expected to grow 10 per cent a year over the same period. The foundry industry revenue will grow from US$32 billion in 2012 to US$48 billion by 2016. Industry revenue from leading-edge products (65 nanometre and below) - which is an area that GF plays in - is expected to almost double in the next five years with approximately 19 per cent annual growth rate, according to iSuppli.

Mr Manocha notes that Singapore continues to be a very good foundation for the foundry business. "The operational excellence here is world-class. Singapore has done very well in terms of the variety of processes and value-added services," he adds.

"We have a lot of customer traction. We are expanding our fab in New York. And we are also expanding our 12-inch fab in Singapore. The expansion started in the later part of last year and is ongoing.

"In Singapore, our 12-inch fab goes up to a 40-nanometre-design rule. We provide a lot of value added services (VAS) like embedded volatile and non-volatile 40 nanometre - that is as advanced as it can get in a non-vanilla process.

"Singapore has its own portfolio of VAS technologies. It is all very advanced. So while Singapore has its own challenges, it is nevertheless doing well."

Becoming the best

Talking about his vision for the company, Mr Manocha says he wants to create the best foundry in the world.

"We want to create history. We want to become the best foundry serving the best fabless companies in the world and supporting them in their innovation and roadmap and be the first choice partner for them in helping drive their growth.

"My objective is to help my customers become more successful. When every single customer acknowledges our contribution, I will then feel that I have accomplished my mission."

That wouldn't be a bad achievement for a boy who grew up in New Delhi, graduating with a degree in chemistry from Delhi University. Like countless other Indians of his generation, he went to the US to do his Masters, which he did at Kansas State University. After that he joined Bell Labs in 1980 and immediately started working on semiconductors.

From AT&T's Bell Labs, Mr Manocha moved to AT&T Microelectronics and ran the company's fab in Madrid, Spain for some time. His next stop was Philips Semiconductor. He held several senior positions there, running worldwide operations and overseeing the spinning off of the division from Philips. Philips Semiconductor was renamed NXP and Mr Manocha, when he left, was executive vice president and chief manufacturing officer.

Then between December 2007 and February 2010, he served as executive vice-president at Spansion. His current association with GF started after that.

Listening to the excitement in his voice, it's obvious that Mr Manocha has no intention of hanging up his boots anytime soon. "What you have been seeing so far is the massive convergence of data and voice. The video convergence hasn't even happened yet so there's a lot of upside and a lot of room for people to get massive video transmission along with data and voice."

He adds that as long as companies like Apple continue to innovate, there will be technology growth and this in turn would boost the industry as ultimately, all these gadgets require the substance which he eats, drinks and dreams about - silicon wafers.

"My objective is to help my customers become more successful. When every single customer acknowledges our contribution, I will then feel that I have accomplished my mission."

- Mr Manocha

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