According to IC Insights, GlobalFoundries completed the 2015 with wafer manufacturing capacity of 762,000 wspm (wafer starts per month) i.e. 4.7% of worldwide capacity, pushing Intel into the fourth position. As Intel transitions to 14nm, the company reduced capacity by 1%, to 714,000 wspm. GlobalFoundries is not expected to reduce capacity anytime soon, as the company continues the path of increasing market share.
Furthermore, GlobalFoundries recently completed the purchase of more land around Fab 8 site in New York State, as they plan to add in more manufacturing capacity. The Fab 8 site was originally called for a single clean room with 60,000 wspm capacity, which radically increased as the world demand for semiconductors increased almost exponentialy, mostly due to explosion in mobile market, with smartphones and tablets requiring billions of additional semiconductor products – processors and memory chips – to be manufactured in order to satisfy the demand. Today’s plans call for three large clean rooms, which would take GlobalFoundries ever so closer to TSMC. Still, not even three clean rooms at Malta, NY would not suffice to overtake TSMC.