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  • mrdude - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    In essence, GloFo has managed to get AMD to pay for GloFo's own incompetence -- and do so twice!

    On the other side of that coin, AMD's consumer revenue has been so atrocious that they only bought $75m worth of wafers in Q2 as per last QC. That's $75m worth of wafers between APUs, CPUs, and now Polaris GPUs combined! That's utterly laughable.

    These two truly deserve each other.
  • Systab - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    Where do you see this $75M figure in Q2? Seems so low.

    We've known how badly GloFo has been doing (having to licence process from Samsung (who got it from that TSMC defector) etc).
  • mrdude - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    From the horse's mouth (though Devinder Kumar is far more handsome than your average horse):

    "Total wafer purchases from GLOBALFOUNDRIES in the second quarter was $75 million, and year-to-date, we have purchased $259 million."

    That was from the last ER.

    AMD has more lines of product running on GloFo fabs than ever before, yet the wafer purchases have never, ever been that low.

    I want to applaud GloFo for being the straight-up gangsters that they are. They managed to get AMD to pay for every wafer that they buy from other foundries. That's some grade-A mafia stuff right there.
  • mrdude - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    I imagine the negotiations went something like this
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48
  • BlueBlazer - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link

    Furthermore AMD still pays Global Foundries for not using their own wafers: "Meanwhile starting in 2017, AMD will also have to pay GlobalFoundries for wafers they buy from third-party foundries."
  • Jleppard - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    IF Zen is what it should be it will be a total slam dunk for AMD. Between Appl, PS4 Pro, Polaris, Zen, Vega all coming at once they will need that Fab Space. If Nvidia needed that much space to make GPU's the 1080 would cost more than 700 MSRP.
  • nothingcompares - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    Strange timing to do it now. There was obviously a need to get this out in the open asap.
    I am expecting more news in the next couple of days now that might not have been able to be made public before this announcement.

    Zen production across multiple fabs to meet expected demand following the positive sample performance?
    10nm Vega?
  • tipoo - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    What I'm reading is, they paid a buttload because otherwise they were stuck in a wafer silicon agreement with Glofo, so this is a really expensive way of saying your fab sucks but we're legally bound to you otherwise.

    Sucks that AMD was bound by it in the first place, but I'm excited that this means TSMC AMD products.
  • tipoo - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    Here's the double whammy, they also paid to get INTO the WSA...Now they have to pay their way out of Glofos crap process, after Glofo convinced them they just needed to get some things in order and the next process would be better.

    AMD, king of foresight....
  • K_Space - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    GloFo has no incentive to innovate if they know their largest customer is going to pay up regardless: a) by getting wafers off them b) or even if they purchase from TSMC!
    This WSA doesn't make sense at all! I'm gonna have to go back to the original article - even then I doubt it will make financial sense!!
  • Kvaern1 - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    Samsung innovates. GloFo has patents.
  • defter - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    You forget that GloFo is basically AMD old fab division. AMD's fabs weren't sustainable and AMD had a large debt. AMD earned billions from GloFo deal, with the catch that it must continue to buy wafers from it.

    Without WSA AMD would have both the underperforming FABs and few billions of extra debt.

    In hindsight both parties failed with their plans. GloFo failed to become a viable foundry to rival TSMC. AMD failed in both CPU and GPU market and therefore it's constantly below the WSA purchasing limits, I doubt this was the AMD's plan in 2009.
  • BurntMyBacon - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    I think I must be confused (some one help me out here). It sounded like AMD is paying GloFlo $100M for the right to pay some more if they don't purchase enough volume and the right to pay more again if they source their wafers elsewhere. Oh, and lets given them some discount company stock while we're at it. What am I missing here?
  • Alexvrb - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    You (and asome others) are missing the fact that they're still on the hook via long-term contracts which allowed them to stay afloat for all these years. They wouldn't have survived long enough to launch Zen if they hadn't unloaded their foundries, and they couldn't have done that without the buyer making them sign a contract. They can renegotiate but the other party has to agree. Their current 14nm LPP designs can only be fabbed by GloFo and Samsung. Samsung may or may not have the capacity to spare, but even if they do, costs could be as high or higher than dealing with GloFo, especially in light of WSA agreements (which again are negotiated jointly with GloFo).

    They could retarget for TSMC but that has similar supply and cost issues as using Samsung, plus it would cause additional delays. The new more flexible contract seems bad at first, but it allows them to use other fabs (at a penalty yes, but better than having your hands tied). That's a forward-looking move because they know GloFo is jumping from 14 to 7nm, and thus they may have to look elsewhere for an intermediate node. I don't think it's intended to change their current 14nm plans.
  • Nagorak - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link

    Exactly. People are forgetting that AMD is on the hook as part of the spin-off. Yes it's unfortunate, especially because GloFo seems to have dropped the ball on process improvements, but AMD is still undoubtedly better off for having spun off the fabs.
  • BurntMyBacon - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link

    I took some time to check out the agreement. For what ever reason, I read this as a renewal to the original agreement. The article clearly states that the original agreement goes through 2024, so my reading comprehension may have suffered in the face of what seemed a completely absurd set of agreements at the time. (0_0)

    I agree that this is a forward-looking move, but 10nm isn't going to be here for a while yet. Perhaps the timing of this change suggests that AMD is also making sure they are prepared if somehow Zen demand exceeds GloFlo production capability.
  • Outlander_04 - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link

    A couple of points:
    1/ presumably the original WSA included targets for process nodes. Probably AMD has been paying less for 32nm wafers after GF failed to move to ~20nm and then their 14 nm process did not work out.
    2/ TSMC will not be the other foundry referred to. Why would it when the TSMC 16nm node is inferior, while Samsung 14 nm is identical since they licensed it to GF . It's also Samsung who can already work at 10nm

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