MALTA\u00a0\u2014 You just don\u2019t make spaceships overnight. And you definitely don\u2019t make the computer chips that power those spaceships overnight.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why it was a significant development when\u00a0BAE Systems announced that week that GlobalFoundries has developed radiation-hardened chips\u00a0for the company.<\/p>\n
And it all happened while GlobalFoundries moved production from East Fishkill to Saratoga County.<\/p>\n
BAE Systems announced June 25 that it has tested its new Endura space chip system and found it \u201cto operate resiliently in natural space and the most severe strategic radiation environments.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a huge boost for GlobalFoundries, which makes the central processor used by BAE Systems in the Endura and previous versions of its main radiation-hardened system-on-a-chip.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Defense gave\u00a0GlobalFoundries a $117 million grant in 2022 (and $8 million previously) to move production from its former Fab 10 in East Fishkill to its more modern factory in Malta, where GlobalFoundries is increasingly making chips for the aerospace industry, including defense contractors.<\/p>\n
The terms of the BAE Systems chipmaking deal with GlobalFoundries were not disclosed. BAE Systems had more than $37 billion in revenue in 2025. GlobalFoundries had $1.83 billion in revenue during that same year. The chipmaker now counts four of the top five defense contractors as clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis milestone positions the\u00a0Endura (chip)\u00a0as a leading high-performance processor for the space community,\u201d Joe\u00a0Dziezynski, Space Systems product line director at BAE Systems said in a prepared statement. \u201cLeveraging commercial foundry technology,\u00a0Endura delivers a smaller, lower-power and more cost-effective solution for missions requiring survivability in harsh radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n
BAE Systems supplied chips in the past to the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers with a previous-generation chip.<\/p>\n
James Schlett, director of research and communications at the Center for Economic Growth in Colonie, said that the Capital Region is growing its aerospace semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.<\/p>\n
Schlett monitors the semiconductor industry in the Capital Region closely. He said GlobalFoundries and NY Creates, the nonprofit that operates the Albany NanoTech complex, have led the charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Capital Region is well on its way to becoming a space hub for microelectronics,\u201d Schlett told the Times Union. \u201cThe Endura radiation-hardened processor helped put the region on that trajectory five years ago when GlobalFoundries and BAE announced their collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n
That transfer of the tech from East Fishkill to Malta also paid dividends to GlobalFoundries in Saratoga County because the 45 nanometer silicon-on-insulator process is also ideal for the company\u2019s artificial intelligence customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cGlobalFoundries\u2019 facility in Malta, New York, is a cornerstone of trusted U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, providing the secure, domestic foundational technologies needed for mission-critical aerospace and defense applications,\u201d Ezra Hall, senior director of aerospace and defense at GlobalFoundries, said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schlett said the Endura still must be qualified by the federal Defense Logistics Agency before it can be used in national security satellites, although that is expected later this year. Officials with\u00a0BAE and GlobalFoundries did not immediately respond to questions about that qualification process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MALTA\u00a0\u2014 You just don\u2019t make spaceships overnight. And you definitely don\u2019t make the computer chips that power those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21224],"tags":[21234,8160,633,24557,767],"class_list":["post-72875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bae","tag-bae","tag-bae-systems","tag-business","tag-latestnews","tag-local"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116835015848621212","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}