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AMD Gives Up Its Share In GlobalFoundries
MrSeb writes "Three years ago today, AMD spun off its fab division, in a move the company claimed would allow it to more effectively leverage its assets, inject new capital into the foundry side of the business, and make it more competitive vis-à-vis Chipzilla. Today, that dream is dead. AMD announced today that it would give up its 8.8% equity stake in the company. When AMD created GlobalFoundries in 2009, the company held a 34.2% share in the foundry. The main thing that AMD gains from this deal is manufacturing flexibility. Previously, Sunnyvale had agreed to manufacture 28nm APUs solely with GlobalFoundries. This new agreement voids that arrangement, freeing AMD to work with TSMC and other foundries.. It's not an agreement that came cheap, though — not only is AMD giving up its 8.8% equity share of GF, it's agreed to pay the manufacturer some $425 million by the end of Q1 2013. AMD will take a $703M charge against the transaction. It's unclear how this move will pan out. We know AMD killed Krishna/Wichita due to manufacturing problems, Llano limped along for most of 2011, and GF's problems at 32nm impacted AMD's ability to sell 45nm chips into the channel. From a macroeconomic perspective, AMD is simply transferring its business to a foundry partner that's more able to meet its needs. One could argue that AMD's decision to get out of the foundry business is a logical extension of new-CEO Rory Read's plan to de-emphasize cutting-edge silicon in favor of SoCs. Time will tell."
Pack it up. AMD is dead.
Tell that do my 4x12 6100s.
Intel is faster per thread on the top end. But, bu the time you have 32/48/64 you're obviously running a parallelizable workload. AMD gives way more bang for the buck.
Speakingof which, they just bought SeaMicro. Apparently they can "cram" 512 atoms or 1024 cores into 10u drawing about 5.5kW.
Well, 5.5Kw will get you 6 1U 4x64 6200 servers, which has 1536 rather faster cores and fits in only 6U, with the same power draw.
I'll bet the SeaMicro box is much, much more expensive too.
Not sure how the SeaMicro numbers add up, TBH.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Not anymore. Once you have no dedicated manufacturing capacity of your own, then during times of general market chip shortage, the fabs will go for the higher margin chips, which AMD can't be since they're selling them @ near break-even prices. The only advantage for AMD here is that that during times of inventory glut, they are under no pressure to keep ordering to keep the lines running, but downside even to that is that fabs would give them a lower priority when the market returns.
AMD isn't giving up design, just the foundary. And in future, Intel must compete with TSMC and friends in process technology, as opposed to their time tested strategy of cutting off AMD's air supply. Makes it more of a game now don't you think?
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