You know, sometimes you wake up, start reading some news and just have to say .. huh?? AMD's primary chip supplier GloFo has halted developing its 7nm process. The mass production of 7nm chips in t... GlobalFoundries halts develoment 7nm, 5nm and 3nm
Basically this means they will soon enough stop producing AMD CPUs and GPUs entirely. Let's hope TSMC doesn't drive it prices up artificially because it certainly could.
Footnotes: GLOBALFOUNDRIES is a leading full-service semiconductor foundry... ...no longer true. Now funny thing is, AMD did have to make contract for 7nm production as did so many other. That may be costly for forge to throw all those contractual obligations to trash. And what about client relationship? Quite some pissed. Not long time ago I read about clients which are willing to invest into cutting edge technology vs. clients which want products very cheaply. Well, if nVidia is to take as example, they want 14/12nm which is supposed to be economical and prices...
I'm sure the clients would also not be happy if they couldn't actually make the 7nm process work properly and economically viable to stay in business to make more chips. I'm sure they didn't make such a decision lightly, but they probably arrived at a point where it was either this, or invest a lot more money into 7nm that they might not get back.
The only interesting thing here in regards to that... other than that they just milk what they already have.
Sad to GF go but this has been happening for years to other Fabs not being able to deliver a smaller node. Only TSMC, Samsung and Intel are left with a Fab that can produce 10nm or smaller.
My guess is they will license the tech from somebody else (Sammy?) once it's mature enough. 7nm from others = 10nm from Intel, and look how long it took and it's still not ready. GloFo doesn't have Intel's money to burn developing tech which doesn't return profits soon. But gratz to TSMC for being able to pull it off, can't wait to see products based on it !
Can´t say i´m surprised. Smaller nodes are getting more and more complex and expensive so at some point foundries have to give up and stick to something that works both technically and commercially.
Usually those contracts were two way streets. AMD had to fab X number of products at GloFlo which that contract was to end by end of the year. I suspect both sides decided to tear each others contractual obligations up. A nice amicable breakup as its the cheapest route especially when the fab isn't going to make the node you signed up for and you want to use another fab anyhow. It's a win win.
Historically when AMD did not take contracted amount of wafers, they had to pay GloFo some money. So I expect that when foundry does not keep their part of deal, they'll pay something to AMD.
There's still millions of kinds of chips that GloFo can produce and stay profitable. Some examples: - Industrial micro-controllers - Network and phone equipment - Detection and Alarm systems - Chips for cars and other vehicles - Military equipment chips - Scientific and medical devices - "Smart building" chips - Drone and robot controllers (and so on, and so on...) None of these need the latest manufacturing, quite the contrary, they require reliable chips that don't fail calculations... and are usually produced on tech 2-4 nodes behind, after said node has proven to have close to 100% reliability. GloFo could be just fine on 16/14/12 nm for the next 20 years. And by that time, I'm sure they'll license smaller nodes and still keep going. There's no shortage of demand for micro-electronics.
Well.... AMD has gotten screwed in the past from Glofo, perhaps for the best. Interesting to see where Samsung goes with this news.
