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GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development: Opts To Focus on Specialized Processes (anandtech.com)
GlobalFoundries has made a major strategy shift announcement. The contract maker of semiconductors says it is ceasing development of bleeding edge manufacturing technologies and stop all work on its 7LP (7 nm) fabrication processes, which will not be used for any client. From a report: Instead, the company will focus on specialized process technologies for clients in emerging high-growth markets. These technologies will initially be based on the company's 14LPP/12LP platform and will include RF, embedded memory, and low power features. Because of the strategy shift, GF will cut 5% of its staff as well as renegotiate its WSA and IP-related deals with AMD and IBM.
GlobalFoundries was on track to tape out its clients' first chips made using its 7 nm process technology in the fourth quarter of this year, but "a few weeks ago" the company decided to take a drastic strategical turn, says Gary Patton. The CTO stressed that the decision was made not based on technical issues that the company faced, but on a careful consideration of business opportunities the company had with its 7LP platform as well as financial concerns. On the heels of this announcement, AMD said today that it will move all of its 7nm production on both CPUs and GPUs to TSMC.
GlobalFoundries was on track to tape out its clients' first chips made using its 7 nm process technology in the fourth quarter of this year, but "a few weeks ago" the company decided to take a drastic strategical turn, says Gary Patton. The CTO stressed that the decision was made not based on technical issues that the company faced, but on a careful consideration of business opportunities the company had with its 7LP platform as well as financial concerns. On the heels of this announcement, AMD said today that it will move all of its 7nm production on both CPUs and GPUs to TSMC.
IBM's fab in Vermont was sold to GF, and believe it continued to be defense-rated for (nobody's talking) type chips. so folks doing things they shouldn't in places they are not supposed to be are going to be scampering for product nobody should know about. look for Intel to suddenly get its 7nm act together.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
7nm is hard, heck, 14, 10nm are hard, even 28nm is hard.
Many more effects, OCV, double, tripple, or quad patterning, not to mention new STA models, fault models, transistor models, extraction models, DRC, ERC and LVS models, all of these cost money.
phones will likely stay on the 28nm process node for a long long time, and unless you plan to charge $600 for a cpu, it's unlikely that even intel or AMD will go to that node for the consumer level stuff.
the ROI just isn't there.