| JEMC said: It could be... By the way, TSMC doesn't mention AMD in the short list of 16nm FinFET adopters and that, paired with the fact that GloFo and Samsung have a partnership for a 14nm process has lead to some speculation. Since their split, AMD has had a contract with GloFo to buy "X" (I don't know how many) waffers each year, but since almost the begining AMD hasn't reached that level of demand so they have been paying them a compensation for basically nothing while buying from TSMC. And now GloFo will have a more advanced process than TSMC with the 14nm but also with the 20nm one as they have access to Samsung's expertise on that node. Get both things together, add the fact that TSMC hasn't delivered on their schedules for the last node jumps, and you can see how AMD could skip TSMC althogether from their 20 and 14nm products and go back to GloFo. But of course, it's just speculation. |
First off, it's just a short list of partners ...
Second, it's possible that AMD are looking towards Global Foundries to manufacture their future graphics chips.
Third, I doubt that either Samsung or Global Foundries are developing a 20nm node so they'll probably have to look at TSMC for the time being until the pair can ramp up their 14nm process node for mass production. They just skipped 20nm altogether and it will be short lived on TSMC's part too.
