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"Ajit Manocha likes to say that he eats, drinks and dreams silicon. While for most people that would seem a curious fascination, for Mr Manocha, who is CEO of GlobalFoundries, (GF), the world's second largest independent semiconductor foundry, that's par for the course.

A chemist by training, he's been working with silicon ever since he left university and joined Bell Labs as a research scientist."

"Interestingly, Mr Manocha had no plans to become CEO of what is arguably one of the fastest growing foundries in the world. After quite an eventful career in which he held several important posts in the semiconductor industry around the world, he had decided, in 2010, to slow down and spend more time with his family in California.

"Being around 55, I wanted to rediscover my family. However, my end goal in life was never to retire but to work on multiple company boards as an adviser."

Since Mr Manocha had extensive experience in running fabs in Europe on account of his leadership days in Philips Semiconductor, the ATIC CEO asked him to take charge of the situation. "He arm-twisted me into taking up an interim CEO's role in GF till they found a permanent CEO. However, after two or three months, the ATIC board decided that there was no need to do a search and that I should be made the permanent CEO."

"One of the reasons why he probably took the decision to make me the permanent CEO was because he had already seen signals of a turnaround at Dresden.

"But he knew that my hands were tied because the new management hires that I had identified did not want to come onboard before they knew who was the new CEO.

In November of 2011, he became the full-time CEO.

"This went against my plan of just spending the rest of my working life serving on different boards and not taking on a hands-on job. However, I'm glad that I took up this job as this is a great challenge and gives me the opportunity to reshape the semiconductor industry," says Mr Manocha.

"GF has all the ingredients to become the best foundry in the world and I find this a great chance for me to create history."

Once at the helm on a full-time basis, Mr Manocha wasted no time in bringing in a new management team. Within the first 29 days, 25 of the top 40 people in the company were replaced. And by Jan 31, 2012, 35 of the top 60 people were out of the company.

"This gave me a totally new management team which has a very hands-on and foundry type DNA. They have done a wonderful job and now Dresden is operating with fantastic results. We have 100 per cent on time delivery and a fully loaded fab with yields that are best in class."

Talking about his vision for the company, Mr Manocha says he wants to create the best foundry in the world.

"We want to create history. We want to become the best foundry serving the best fabless companies in the world and supporting them in their innovation and roadmap and be the first choice partner for them in helping drive their growth.

"My objective is to help my customers become more successful. When every single customer acknowledges our contribution, I will then feel that I have accomplished my mission."

That wouldn't be a bad achievement for a boy who grew up in New Delhi, graduating with a degree in chemistry from Delhi University. Like countless other Indians of his generation, he went to the US to do his Masters, which he did at Kansas State University. After that he joined Bell Labs in 1980 and immediately started working on semiconductors.

From AT&T's Bell Labs, Mr Manocha moved to AT&T Microelectronics and ran the company's fab in Madrid, Spain for some time. His next stop was Philips Semiconductor. He held several senior positions there, running worldwide operations and overseeing the spinning off of the division from Philips. Philips Semiconductor was renamed NXP and Mr Manocha, when he left, was executive vice president and chief manufacturing officer.

Then between December 2007 and February 2010, he served as executive vice-president at Spansion. His current association with GF started after that.

Listening to the excitement in his voice, it's obvious that Mr Manocha has no intention of hanging up his boots anytime soon. "What you have been seeing so far is the massive convergence of data and voice. The video convergence hasn't even happened yet so there's a lot of upside and a lot of room for people to get massive video transmission along with data and voice."

He adds that as long as companies like Apple continue to innovate, there will be technology growth and this in turn would boost the industry as ultimately, all these gadgets require the substance which he eats, drinks and dreams about - silicon wafers.

"My objective is to help my customers become more successful. When every single customer acknowledges our contribution, I will then feel that I have accomplished my mission."

- Mr Manocha

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