GlobalFoundries to receive $300M in federal funding for silicon photonics research
The U.S. government will provide GlobalFoundries with $300 million in funding to support its silicon photonics research.
The U.S. Commerce Department committed to providing the capital in a letter of intent that was announced today. As part of the transaction, the government will take a 1% stake in GlobalFoundries. The development comes two months after the chipmaker secured a separate $375 million federal grant for a new quantum chip foundry.
GlobalFoundries operates fabs that produce chips based on customer-provided designs. One of the company’s specialties is making low-power processors that don’t require the latest manufacturing technologies. Additionally, GlobalFoundries produces auxiliary chips optimized for tasks filtering Wi-Fi inference.
Silicon photonics, the focus of the company’s agreement with the Commerce Department, is an umbrella term for the chips that power fiber-optic networks. Such networks power many of the world’s artificial intelligence data centers.
