Yeah this one is hard to look at, especially because for a while it looked like it was a very bad move for AMD. In retrospect it was still a kinda bad contract

Yeah this one is hard to look at, especially because for a while it looked like it was a very bad move for AMD. In retrospect it was still a kinda bad contract for them for a while (IIRC, GloFo couldn't deliver on process for Bulldozer, which led to poor yields/heat/etc, killing demand, but AMD had contracts with GloFo stipulating penalties for not hitting certain order numbers.) But at the same time, they were then unshackled as you said; As time went on and they could move more volume to TSMC it wound up helping them out immensely. It's kinda worth remembering too though, that even at their 'peak' in the early 2000s AMD was 6-12 months behind Intel on process tech if you go by releases. Given the trouble Intel has had keeping up one could only imagine where AMD would be now.