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The expansion targets annual capacity above one million wafers by late 2028. A new chip platform planned for the site still needs German approval before development can begin.
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GlobalFoundries’ €1.1 billion SPRINT project has cleared its topping-out milestone, while Dresden’s existing fab continues operating; the expanded site is not yet complete. The company expects annual capacity to rise from up to 950,000 to more than 1 million 300mm wafers by the end of 2028. Separately, it plans to develop FDX Fusion for energy-efficient physical-AI chips, but work depends on German approval under an upcoming semiconductor program. “7nm-like” describes a performance target, not a manufacturing process node.
Exyte is adding cleanroom and manufacturing infrastructure while the current Dresden plant remains fully operational.
FDX Fusion is intended to combine processing, sensing, real-time control and secure connectivity with analog, mixed-signal, memory and RF capabilities.
SPRINT is intended to support Europe-only manufacturing processes and associated data flows for security-sensitive customers, including aerospace and critical-infrastructure operators.
GlobalFoundries expects its Dresden site’s annual production capacity to exceed one million 300mm wafers by the end of 2028. On October 9, 2026, the chipmaker marked the topping-out of its €1.1 billion SPRINT expansion and set out plans to develop and manufacture FDX Fusion there, targeting energy-efficient chips for demanding physical-AI applications.
The ceremony marks a construction milestone, not the completion of the expanded factory. GlobalFoundries says this phase finished on schedule and on budget, allowing the remaining work in both the existing facility and the expansion to continue as planned.
Exyte, the project’s general contractor, is adding cleanroom and manufacturing infrastructure while the existing plant remains fully operational. Project director Mark Vokes said the topping-out demonstrated that Exyte, GlobalFoundries and their partners were advancing the expansion according to plan.
Dresden currently has annual capacity of up to 950,000 300mm wafers, depending on the mix of products manufactured. GlobalFoundries employs around 3,000 people there and operates approximately 60,000 square meters of cleanroom and laboratory space. It says it has invested more than €10 billion at the site since 2009.
The platform announcement concerns development and future manufacturing in Dresden, rather than a chip technology entering production now. GlobalFoundries intends to pursue FDX Fusion through the upcoming IPCEI Advanced Semiconductor Technologies program. The actual start of development is contingent on German federal government approval of the project’s start for GF Dresden.
The company’s stated target is “7nm-like” digital performance combined with analog, mixed-signal, embedded-memory and high-performance radio-frequency capabilities. The wording is a performance target, not a statement that FDX Fusion is a 7nm manufacturing process.
The added SPRINT capacity will support GlobalFoundries’ technologies for automotive, aerospace, industrial internet-of-things and defense applications. The company identifies those markets as increasingly shaped by physical AI.
GlobalFoundries says the expansion will enable Europe-only processes and data flows for customers with stringent security needs, including critical-infrastructure and aerospace customers. The commitment covers manufacturing processes and associated data flows, not simply the location of the factory.
SPRINT is supported by the European Union, Germany’s federal government and the Free State of Saxony under the European Chips Act. GlobalFoundries places the project within Europe’s effort to strengthen semiconductor supply chains and industrial competitiveness.
Story updates
GlobalFoundries has set a 2028 manufacturing target for a new chip platform designed for robots, autonomous systems and other machines that interact with their surroundings. Its FDX Fusion roadmap, announced October 9, 2026, puts customer evaluation ahead of production in Dresden, Germany, with initial silicon and design tools targeted for 2027.
FDX Fusion is a development roadmap, not a platform entering production. It extends GlobalFoundries’ FDX line of FD-SOI technology for “Physical AI”: systems that process data in real time and interact with the physical environment.
GlobalFoundries organizes those requirements into four jobs: sense, think, act and communicate. Its intended applications span automotive, consumer and industrial markets. Alongside robotics and autonomous systems, the company names industrial automation, connected devices and sensor fusion—bringing multiple sensor inputs together—as areas the platform is expected to serve.
That scope explains why the roadmap reaches beyond digital computing performance. GlobalFoundries intends to combine dense logic with radio-frequency capabilities, analog and mixed-signal features, embedded non-volatile memory, and computing within memory. It also targets low-leakage operation. The stated goal is to reduce system complexity, response delays and power consumption while supporting the full physical-AI workload.
GlobalFoundries expects the first FDX Fusion generation to deliver seven-nanometer-class digital performance and more than twice the density of first-generation FDX technology. The proposed changes cover several layers of chip construction: the underlying substrate, the transistors and the connections between them.
There is an established product base behind that proposal. GlobalFoundries says billions of chips using its existing technology are already deployed across automotive radar and sensors, wireless microcontrollers, display drivers, and communications components.
GlobalFoundries says several customers are engaged in early development and evaluation, with their application requirements informing the design. Its supporting ecosystem includes MIPS and ARC processor technology, RISC-V instruction-set architecture, and application-specific processor design capabilities. The company also plans process flows and cost structures intended to speed prototyping.
Infineon provided a specific example of the platform-linked work. In the announcement, executive Patrick Press said the companies are strengthening their collaboration to define and explore future seven-nanometer-class FDX Fusion technologies for radar and wireless communications products.
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