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Apple is also a TSMC customer I believe.
by zapita 8y ago
Apple is also a TSMC customer I believe.
- monocasa 8y agoSo is AMD (they're shutting down GloFlo).
- cdmckay 8y agoI thought they spun it off?
- monocasa 8y agoThey did, but recently GloFlo announced that they're stopping R&D on newer nodes and are switching purely to sustaining engineering.
- kankroc 8y agoSource? GloFo stopped pursuing 7nm but that is far from shutting down.
- monocasa 8y agoEveryone working on R&D either got laid off, or moved to sustaining engineering on existing nodes. AMD is doing 7nm on TSMC. That's about as shut down as foundries get since the capital investment is all up front.
- ATsch 8y agoI'm not sure how they could shut down GloFo, considering they don't own it. Besides, GloFo is still doing decently even if they've dropped 7nm... high-end isn't the whole chip market. And AMD is still using GloFo for non-7nm designs.
- metildaa 8y agoAMD's strategy of using multiple Zen 2 dies (7nm) tied together by a 14nm I/O die (since I/O doesn't scale down quite as well) is a really interesting strategy to improve yields using smaller dies (rather than making huge, low yield chips like the competition) & reduce mask/production cost. One 7nm Zen 2 mask can be used to produce CPU cores for a multitude of SKUs, optimizing for different markets using (cheaply customized) I/O interconnects made on 14nm. This allows for AMD to keep much less silicon on hand for stocking the myriad of SKUs, as the only bottleneck for ramping up production of a SKU is producing those I/O interconnects on 14nm, which is a well understood process.
- ATsch 8y agoI think you replied to the wrong comment, but this also allows AMD to manufacture the IO die with glofo, which saves cost not only because 14nm capacity is much higher, but also since AMD's agreement with glofo requires them to pay a fee for every wafer they manufacture with another fab.
- monocasa 8y agoWord on the street is they're dropping that part of the AMD/GloFlo WSA. https://wccftech.com/amd-is-negotiating-a-7th-amendment-to-the-wsa-wafer-supply-agreement/ https://wccftech.com/amd-is-negotiating-a-7th-amendment-to-t...
- llampx 8y agoAMD is a TSMC customer but GlobalFoundries is far from shutting down.
- monocasa 8y agoAMD isn't shipping any new GloFlo processors, and GloFlo either laid off or shifted their all of their R&D to sustaining. That's as close to shutting down as foundries get.