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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.
'Not based on technical issues' but based on...lots of bullshit...as well as financial concerns.
'Financial concerns' like a 10% yield, or some other technical disaster, so full of shit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
AMD's contract with GlobalFoundries was ending this year anyway, so AMD doesn't lose anything with this announcement, other than a potential alternate source. In fact, it's entirely possible that GF's failure to secure AMD as a client may have played into their decision to drop 7nm.
That said, with only Samsung and TSMC on the leading edge now, it does mean that AMD has one less bargaining chip next time negotiations come around (i.e. they can't realistically threaten to go back to GF), whereas Intel will continue using their own processes as they always have. So, at least in that minor regard, I suppose this does benefit Intel and harm AMD somewhat.
Did Moore's law just end? Intel said they thought it had...maybe this is confirmation.
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The most important thing in my pants is only 2.5 nanometers in diameter.
In the finals: Samsung vs TSMC.
Wow. Much drastical. Very strategical.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Apparently GloFo has been bleeding money for years, and they're not big enough to compete with Samsung and TSMC on the latest nodes and remain profitable. So instead of chasing the latest process shrink, they're targeting niches that are more profitable and less served by the other companies. Despite what the summary implies, they were still pretty far away from volume production of 7nm, for which they're using standard lithography tech at this point. EUV 7nm would come later and require $billions more to get up and running, and it's predicted it won't pay off for them to do this.
Seems GlobalFoundries is owned by Abu Dhabi, didn't know that.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Smart move. There is just too much bleeding edge science and engineering at 7nm, this is a physical reality. Stick with profitable, mature fab tech and iteratively improve it. Get into 7nm when some of the horrible EUV issues have well known solutions, which should carry on to 5nm.
Meanwhile, the big Asian fabs are said to be ramping 7nm production, but as far as I know, nobody has seen actual parts arrive beyond samples. Certainly not enough to have a good idea about yields. Definitely a believe it when you see it situation. Of course, I hope that Samsung and TSMC have actually overtaken Intel at this transition, and given the economics of the situation it seems inevitable, but we do not have proof it has actually happened yet.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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?
the fab side of AMD was always looking for another buck. nothing has changed.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You didn't make it clear how this relates to the story and what you want GlobalFoundries to do. Do you really want them to keep throwing good money after bad when they can't afford to fund the new 7nm node all the way to production? Is the world really better off having them do 7nm when a few other companies expect to be able to do it better?
Profit in the wide sense means that you gain from your actions. If you profit on nothing, you die -- soon.
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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.
it does mean that AMD has one less bargaining chip next time negotiations come around (i.e. they can't realistically threaten to go back to GF)
It doesn't say that they're never going to compete at 7nm, they're just saying that they're not going to compete right now while it's the cutting edge. From the story:
Gary Patton admits that GlobalFoundries never planned to be a leading producer of 7-nm chips in terms of volume. Furthermore, the company has been seeing increasing adoption of its 14LPP/12LP technologies by designers of various emerging devices, keeping Fab 8 busy and leaving fewer step-and-scan systems for 7LP products.
So the main business reasons seem to be related to the fact that they're getting increased demand for their older processes, and can make more money on that then on doing the R&D to be a bit player at 7nm. They'd need a new factory to do both, and they don't think it is worth building a new factory for 7nm right now.
So I would expect them to be adding 7nm later, when TSMC and Samsung are pushing 5 and 3nm. And by then, AMD may still be on 7nm and happy to switch back. Maybe in 3 years AMD will have their top end chips somewhere else, and most of their volume coming from GF. Totally realistic.
Doubt it, since AMD just shifted to TSMC.
Probably more like GlobalFoundries wasn't confident in the progress they were making, so cut their losses.
If you have an idea how to make a production line better than current silicon technologies in only 5 years, you'll be a billionaire.
But you don't. You're just pulling numbers out of your ass.
Lattice Semiconductor Appoints Jim Anderson (former AMD General Manager and Senior Vice President of the Computing and Graphics Business Group. ) as CEO
https://www.marketwatch.com/pr...
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation LSCC, a leading provider of customizable smart connectivity solutions, announced the appointment of Jim Anderson as the Company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, and to the Company’s Board of Directors, effective September 4, 2018. Mr. Anderson brings broad technology industry experience and a proven track record of leading and transforming businesses to drive sustained growth and profitability. Mr. Anderson joins Lattice from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) where he served as the General Manager and Senior Vice President of the Computing and Graphics Business Group.
If you have an idea how to make a production line better than current silicon technologies in only 5 years, you'll be a billionaire.
But you don't. You're just pulling numbers out of your ass.
He's making room for his foundry.
We are already at the point where speed-of-light delays have a significant effect in limiting clock speed. An improvement of even 10X in clock speed may be something that we'll never see, not in silicon, not in carbon, not in fairy dust.
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The cost of the foundaries has been rising exponentially. While circuit density has been doubling every 18 months, foundary cost has been doubling every 36 months. When Moore's law was proposed the engineering was the main limiting factor in increasing density, it has been shifting though to a financing problem. The result has been few and few foundaries on the bleeding edge. I can't imagine things continuing for another 9 years (3 more doublings). Even if there was only one foundary left at that point it probably wouldn't be economical. There just wouldn't be enough of a market. The other problem is R&D as a percentage of revenue. Basically to stay on top a foundary is now spending 20% of revenue on R&D. Margins aren't going up only volume
This brings up another dilemma about the last 20 years of economic growth. Much of the recent economic growth has been driven by increases in market size. Companies make more and more specialized widgets for lower and lower costs but are only able to do this because the market size has increased. I can sell to all of North America, then Europe, China and now India. The environment can't even support the 3.5 billion people in the world economy today. Even if we do double that number we can only double one more time.
So who, exactly, gets to decide what 'real happiness' is? Who gets to decide what 'improves' your life?
Your ideas aren't stopped by some mystical 'them', they are stopped because they are nothing more than 'the whole world should do what I want'.
Possible, but I doubt it. Intel may not be able to figure out how to get 7 nm to work for years. TSMC is the obvious choice for AMD to remain in the lead for CPUs and their only hope for parity on GPUs. TSMC may make them pay more for the best quality silicon and fastest capacity, but it'd be worth it.
with only Samsung and TSMC on the leading edge now, it does mean that AMD has one less bargaining chip next time negotiations come around
Weirdest thing would be, AMD contracts with Intel to fab some upcoming GPU. It could happen. Another thing not out of the question: Intel follows AMD and spins off its fabs. Very not out of the question.
Wow, now who got triggered by that? Intel crying uncle on in-house fabs, no so bad, worse could happen.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If you actually look at the history between AMD and GF, GF being AMD's manufacturing division spun off as it's own company, this is pretty huge for AMD. GF absolutely was going to be their primary supplier of 7nm wafers the same way they're AMD's primary supplier of 12/14nm wafers. Particularly TSMC, who would have been GF's primary competitor in 7nm, simply won't have the capacity AMD needs to spare when Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm and a whole lot of other companies will all be fighting for their capacity.
The issue isn't made any better by the fact that the new 7nm processes coming along will be utilizing lithography processes with additional patterns and longer times to etch each of the patterns into the substrate. In other words the output of each production line will be considerably lower than current processes.
Seriously, if AMD wasn't already in talks with Samsung for 7nm production, their 7nm rollout is going to be very seriously hampered by low manufacturing capacity and will probably affect their bottom line along with both market and mindshare as a thinly veiled paper launch like the initial launch of consumer Vega isn't exactly good for customer relations.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Actually, at these scales of under 100nm, semiconductors have already hit the point of diminishing returns. After all, what are the reasons to do a die shrink, rather than just run a chip production off a fab that's already been up and running, and probably written down? It's cost, and at today's level, things like power consumption and speed are distant followers. But when it costs $10B to build a fab that can do one of these, then going from, say, a 30nm to a 14nm would not give a manufacturer the cost savings they were hoping for.
Time to tell people downstream who buy these things that the era of continuous price drops is over! In fact, it ended some 10 years ago