TSMC and GlobalFoundries Ink $2 Billion Deal to Scale US Advanced Packaging

TSMC has entered into a multi-year, $2 billion partnership with GlobalFoundries to increase the American production of advanced semiconductors, according to reporting from The Register. Under the terms of the deal, GlobalFoundries will manufacture silicon interposers at its Malta, New York facility to support TSMC's chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging specification.

Silicon interposers are critical components for multi-die assemblies, including AI accelerators and GPUs, as they provide lower power and higher speed communication paths between memory and compute logic than traditional organic packaging. The Register notes that nearly every chip utilizing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) currently requires an interconnect bridge or interposer.

While TSMC is working to expand domestic capacity through its own Arizona facilities and a contract with OSAT provider Amkor, The Register reports that neither of those options is expected to be operational until 2028 and 2029, respectively. GlobalFoundries intends to expand capacity at the Malta site, though volume production is not anticipated until at least the first half of 2028. The partnership is slated to last five years with an option for extension.

This move addresses a significant bottleneck in US manufacturing. For example, The Register highlighted that Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs produced at TSMC's Arizona plant last year still required round-tripping to Taiwan for final assembly. While Intel Foundry currently offers comparable advanced packaging and process technology compatible with TSMC-produced silicon, the TSMC-GlobalFoundries deal specifically targets the scaling of the widely used CoWoS standard within the US.