One of the reasons why AMD is still stuck at 32 nm for its FX processors and 28 nm for its GPUs is that the company does not own chip producing plants anymore. A few years ago AMD spanned off its production facilities and turned them over to GlobalFoundries, getting a share of the new company instead but time has proved this is not a universal solution. And while next year GlobalFoundries will be ready with its 14 nm production process, AMD has struck an interesting deal – starting next year Samsung will also produce AMD chips!
The deal affects both CPUs and GPUs and will allow AMD to get chips from both GlobalFoundries and Samsung at the same time. Samsung will make the new AMD GPUs and Zen processors using 14 nm as well so the company will not have a technological advantage compared to GlobalFoundries. This decision by AMD is not surprising – Samsung helped GlobalFoundries to develop its 14 nm FinFET process. The deal, by the way, will serve Samsung well too – the decline in smartphone sales that Samsung experienced has left some chip production lines inactive so by making AMD processors Samsung will be able to utilize these production lines as well and make more cash. The Korean company already makes chips for Apple and NVIDIA.
As to AMD – the US company plans to present a new GPU generation called Arctic Islands as well as an entirely new chip architecture called Zen, so it will definitely need production capacity.
Source: Reuters