AMD announced that it has entered into a long-term amendment to its Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF) for the period from Jan. 1, 2016 to Dec. 31, 2020.... AMD Changes Wafer Supply Agreement With GLOBALFOUNDRIES
I guess the 14nm process must be working as intended, despite Polaris's low clocks, if they are already committed to 7nm. This ought to be good news for Zen, whose clocking capability is still publicly unknown.
This is truly a big deal..in my humble opinion it means AMD is coming back big time, Mubadala owner of Global-foundries already controls 18% of AMD and now a warrant to purchase 75 million shares of AMD. sure there is this " warrant is only exercisable to the extent that Mubadala or its subsidiaries do not beneficially own, either directly or indirectly, an aggregate of more than 19.99 percent of AMD's outstanding capital stock after the exercise." guess it got to do with preventing Abu Dhabi government from taking control over AMD, again just speculations. but who knows maybe we will witness a re-merge between AMD and GF. agian just me thinking out loud :nerd:, only time will tell
I never seen so much hype,benchmarks and review of unpublished products like AMD ZEN. These days everyone talk about killer performance,8,16,32 cores,low TDP and yet they didn't earn a single cent from it or sell a single one.
I agree. No question that it means AMD is so confident of a severe spike in demand for its CPUs and GPUs that it wants to ensure it has sufficient FAB capacity for the next five years--enough to pay for the guarantees in capacity from GF. With respect to buying GF back, that's always possible but I think so long as a FABless arrangement is working it may be beneficial for both parties, here. AMD is doing everything right, now, thanks to its fantastic CEO...! She understands the market, understands AMD's strengths and Intel and nVidia's weaknesses. She is the first AMD CEO who hasn't tried to run AMD like Motorola was run in its halcyon days... Hooray! She's making sure AMD has the tech it needs to move forward and only *then* is she addressing the FAB situation! Beauty and brains...what's not to like?...
I've seen much more hype from nVidia, trust me... You must not remember the infamous nV30...! 30-day "countdown" on the nVidia site--reams of phony benchmarks--10x more gossip than fact. And it only took nVidia six months after the launch to cancel nV30 entirely and go back to the drawing board--x-raying R300's to see how ATi did it, etc.... Fun days they were [not.] If you didn't live through nV30 you have no idea what "hype" really is...! You would not *believe* how nVidia and its minions threw off on FSAA--saying "We don't believe FSAA is the right direction for 3d," only because nVidia couldn't seem to make a decent GPU that would do FSAA if its life depended on it...:nerd: When they finally figured out how to do it all the criticism stopped. BTW, guy, the only reason they haven't "made any money" with ZEN is because it is yet to ship... That's generally the way it is with new architectures from any chip manufacturer. It will be shipping very soon, though, so you can relax...! Not to worry.
Unfortunately it has more to do with the current miserable lack of competition leading to little development and high prices than everybody really holding their breath for an exciting new AMD product specifically. If the market had had real competition all the time, this hype wouldn't be there. Now we have already lived years under the mercy of a monopoly as far as really worthwhile CPUs go. It's like all shops and bars selling only a single brand of beer for years, and then suddenly you hear the news another brand will appear soon.
I would love to get my hands on an affordable and yet high performing processor, with decent temps and low power usage, but chances are AMD will never be able to deliver.
Bulldozer was far more hyped. I don't expect miracles now either, it's a bit of an uphill battle for AMD to catch-up. And what Kaarme said...
Pardon me if I'm skeptical considering bulldozer's hype and wrong approach towards many weak cores. At least we know they're working on IPC this time. Alas I hope I get proven wrong, we need competition badly.
The FX processors are the only real choice for the <$150 gaming market at this point. The closest Intel CPU to that is the i3-6300, which might be faster than the equivalent priced FX-8350 in some games, but it's a complete suicide to get a dual core CPU at this point.
All has to do with SEC regulations. Under 20% still considered a minority interest and can be treated as such. Anything more, other rules may come into play.
