SINGAPORE -- With the global semiconductor crunch failing to abate, U.S.-based chipmaker GlobalFoundries will decide where to further increase its capacity -- Singapore, New York or Germany -- "by the end of this year," Chief Executive Tom Caulfield told Nikkei Asia.

The company for the past several years has been heavily investing to boost its capacity in all three of its manufacturing locations. However, the chief executive said the company will "continue to chase capacity to meet demand" for "the next five to 10 years," stressing a willingness to make additional investments in any of the three existing sites.

Caulfield was visiting Singapore, where the company has announced a $4 billion investment and is currently constructing a new fab with 23,000 sq. meters of clean room space. It also has announced that it will expand its capacity at its manufacturing sites in the United States and Germany.

"The investments we're rolling out today," he said, will allow GlobalFoundries to increase "output by the end of 2024. But for us to keep growing, we will have to have plans to begin a new facility," Caulfield told Nikkei. "And by the end of this year, we'll decide where" to add the capacity -- in Singapore, New York or Germany.

He said it would be "very difficult for us to ever consider doing a manufacturing facility" somewhere else. Caulfield denied a report that the company was considering building a factory in France in partnership with STMicroelectronics.

GlobalFoundries was the world's fourth largest semiconductor foundry for the first quarter of 2022, after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung Electronics of South Korea and Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp., according to research company Counterpoint. It makes various chips designed by U.S.-based Qualcomm, Advanced Micro Devices, Taiwan's MediaTek and others.

GlobalFoundries is currently constructing a new fab with 23,000 square meters of clean room space in Singapore. (Photo courtesy of GlobalFoundries)

TSMC and Samsung also have announced massive investments in the United States to respond to rising demand and build more robust supply chains. Caulfield said rivals' attempt to diversify their global footprint will be "very painful, very difficult."

"You will always see us expanding at existing sites," he added. "It's the quickest way to get capacity." He said he disdains new locations because he does not want to "have to build a team from scratch."

Caulfield said one of GlobalFoundries' biggest advantages of is that "we operate on three continents and have a global supply chain."

Unlike its Taiwanese and South Korean rivals, which produce the most advanced semiconductors, GlobalFoundries focuses on producing chips no tinier than 12 nanometers.

Caulfield said demand for these chips will keep growing as they find their way into more cars, high-end smartphones and connected devices. He said the gap between demand and capacity for the chips GlobalFoundries produces will be prolonged. "We'll be investing for the better part of the next decade," he said.

Research company IDC in June warned that in the "longer-term, the new fabs and investment announcements will add significant capacity and could increase the risk of overcapacity beyond 2023."

Caulfield said demand for PCs and lower-end smartphones is softening. But, he said, "those little bits of softness we're seeing are allowing us to close some of the gaps." The only thing that could get in the way of the semiconductor industry's growth, he concluded, would be a "huge macroeconomic event."