GlobalFoundries will hold its official groundbreaking for Fab 2 at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta on July 24.

Globalfoundries has announced the appointment of Norm Armour as vice president and general manager and Eric Choh as vice president of operations to lead an expanding team dedicated to developing Fab 2 in New York.

At the 2009 Symposium on VLSI Technology in Kyoto, Japan, Globalfoundries reported the first demonstration of a technique that allows the equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) in a high-k metal gate (HKMG) transistor to scale down to well beyond the level required for the 22nm node, while maintaining a combination of low leakage, low threshold voltages, and superior carrier mobility.

Once completed, Globalfoundries' Fab 2 project is expected to create more than 6,400 direct and indirect jobs in the region.

AMD's spun-off manufacturing arm, Globalfoundries, reportedly has convinced Subramani Kengeri to join its team. Kengeri comes from manufacturing giant TSMC and was one of the key people behind the recently announced TSMC/Intel deal.

AMD's first quarter earnings, as expected, show the amount of red ink on the company's balance sheet is growing. Still, there was a slight bump in processor revenues, though unfortunately the company's GPU business is still down.

In a recent interview, Globalfoundries vice president of manufacturing systems and technology Tom Sonderman said that the company plans to make GPUs using 28nm processes in the near future.