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[SA] AMD chides Global Foundries in a cryptic release

2201 Views 20 Replies 19 Participants Last post by  SpeedyVT
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The short story, you can read it in this press release, is that the Wafer Purchase Agreement between AMD and Global Foundries has changed. AMD used to pay per wafer, as is the industry norm for dealing with foundries, and they still do for 45nm wafers. On 32nm wafers, AMD is now paying per good chip, something that is never done, even when things are horrifically bad. On top of that, AMD also takes a $492 million non-cash gain in Q1 relating to Global Foundries, the Chartered Semiconductor acquisition, and how that deal is structured.

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Llano is being produced! Time for some burglary!
Is a good thing, now AMD only paid for the chip that is good, and the bad one, GF can eat the failure of those yield

More expenive? idk
I get the feeling that this'll mean the end of "unlockable" processors, since they're not taking any "bad" chips to be reborn into dual/quad/(most possibly)hexa-core processors.
Sweet this just means that AMD is finding a way to make the BD chips cheaper for consumers!
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Originally Posted by Toransu
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I get the feeling that this'll mean the end of "unlockable" processors, since they're not taking any "bad" chips to be reborn into dual/quad/(most possibly)hexa-core processors.

I think they mean bad chip as in DOA, that does not fully function, before AMD are paying by Per wafer meaning if there is few bad yielding in some of those wafer, AMD gonna eat those lost

so for example $10 per wafer including the bad one...

Now that same wafer cost only $7 because few of the chips are bad

This will bring price lower to consumer as well

Unless GF are charging more per chips then on wafer.

(Those pricing is just an example)
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Originally Posted by DrDarkTempler
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I think they mean bad chip as in DOA, that does not fully function, before AMD are paying by Per wafer meaning if there is few bad yielding in some of those wafer, AMD gonna eat those lost

so for example $10 per wafer including the bad one...

Now that same wafer cost only $7 because few of the chips are bad

This will bring price lower to consumer as well

Unless GF are charging more per chips then on wafer.

(Those pricing is just an example)

Or AMD could charge the same but make more money. Either way, more money for AMD is good.
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Not sure if this is good or bad news... will be interesting to see peoples responses on this.

EDIT:
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Whatever the real reasons are, they will likely be answered during a call AMD has for the financial community Monday morning.
NEWS TOMORROW?!?!?
hmm this should bring the prices of CPU's down hopefully. AMD is already band for buck and buck for core.

if clock for clock AMD perform better then Intel and the price is the normal bang for buck then i think that AMD will start to own market share.

Now all they need is a nice kernel to work with OSX and that will be all access to all markets
Well I really hope that the 28nm process is a really nice high quality performance wise, I remember hearing oh the 68xx's will be great and will be 28nm, then is was supposed to be the 69xx's. Now AMD is only willing to pay by the good chip? Oh yeah it's been an extra year and now their still not really all that confident with the production quality?

Amd please don't let your self get distracted, yes... yes... I know that bulldozer is running late, fine things happen. But if a chip fab can't live up to your requirements just move on, I don't want my upcoming 7xxx card to end up being your take on a 590.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toransu;12993257
I get the feeling that this'll mean the end of "unlockable" processors, since they're not taking any "bad" chips to be reborn into dual/quad/(most possibly)hexa-core processors.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

That is all.
Maybe its a way to get Global back on there toes on chip production. It they have gotten sloppy it would be beneficial to AMD to go production based. People and company's work better and more efficiently when there pay is dependent on performance.
If they're buying per die instead of wafer that's bad news.

Manufacturers purchase per wafer (based on high yield), if they're buying per die I assume yield is bad and will correlate with higher costs; I hope I'm wrong.
Who knows, maybe they still are indeed taking bad chips, just not paying for them anymore
There will still be 6 core and 4 core BD with partially disabled core segments, I assume they will continue to use slightly defective core parts similar to Phenom II.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fools79;12993940
Well I really hope that the 28nm process is a really nice high quality performance wise, I remember hearing oh the 68xx's will be great and will be 28nm, then is was supposed to be the 69xx's. Now AMD is only willing to pay by the good chip? Oh yeah it's been an extra year and now their still not really all that confident with the production quality?

Amd please don't let your self get distracted, yes... yes... I know that bulldozer is running late, fine things happen. But if a chip fab can't live up to your requirements just move on, I don't want my upcoming 7xxx card to end up being your take on a 590.
amd has a signed agreement with glofo to use more of their fabs capacity in the future ... amd cant back up out of such contract easily ... and anyway glofo is amd's past foundry .. so they know alot about this business ...

paying for good chips instead of paying for a full wafer and end up paying for some duds that you cant sell is better.. its win/win for amd ...

so i wish them well with this new approach

Quote:
Originally Posted by rocketman331;13017297
If they're buying per die instead of wafer that's bad news.

Manufacturers purchase per wafer (based on high yield), if they're buying per die I assume yield is bad and will correlate with higher costs; I hope I'm wrong.
doesnt mean that at all ... it could mean that amd was losing valueable money and since they own 30% shares of glofo they negotiated a deal because they have a contract to use glofo more and more in the future .. so glofo said why not .. they are a customer we wont lose anyway ....

so glofo take the blow on the yield part .. not that it might be horrible .. and amd makes as much proffit as they can ... so more money for development .. and maybe more aggresive pricing .. wich would result in more dies request .. wich is more demand for glofo wich is win for them ....

or it could be something more simple along the line of OMG bulldozer is fail or something stupid like that
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Quote:


Originally Posted by Fr0sty
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amd has a signed agreement with glofo to use more of their fabs capacity in the future ... amd cant back up out of such contract easily ... and anyway glofo is amd's past foundry .. so they know alot about this business ...

paying for good chips instead of paying for a full wafer and end up paying for some duds that you cant sell is better.. its win/win for amd ...

so i wish them well with this new approach

doesnt mean that at all ... it could mean that amd was losing valueable money and since they own 30% shares of glofo they negotiated a deal because they have a contract to use glofo more and more in the future .. so glofo said why not .. they are a customer we wont lose anyway ....

so glofo take the blow on the yield part .. not that it might be horrible .. and amd makes as much proffit as they can ... so more money for development .. and maybe more aggresive pricing .. wich would result in more dies request .. wich is more demand for glofo wich is win for them ....

or it could be something more simple along the line of OMG bulldozer is fail or something stupid like that

Either this.. Or theyre just having a really hard time with initial 32nm production.. I thought i remember hearing intel had problems with their 32nm production process right off the bat too
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Originally Posted by killeraxemannic
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Sweet this just means that AMD is finding a way to make the BD chips cheaper for consumers!

No. Charging per die means that GloFo's yields are very bad. It means that AMD are sucking tonnes of loss from bad wafers at the moment. This means that AMD will be paying quite a high price per die - purely because the other dies are of bad quality. They'll be saving some money in the short term, but if GloFo improves its 32nm process, it could tip the balance towards AMD losing lots of money.

This is a real indicator of GloFo performance - even nVidia pay by the wafer at TSMC, and they had torrid yields at one point.
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I would say this is a smart move. Now we'll have less complaining that products come DOA or need to be RMAed. Save some money. That doesn't mean you won't be able to get products that unclock. They just give you the good chips. Good chips work. Unclockable chips are unclockable.
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Originally Posted by HybridCore
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I would say this is a smart move. Now we'll have less complaining that products come DOA or need to be RMAed. Save some money. That doesn't mean you won't be able to get products that unclock. They just give you the good chips. Good chips work. Unclockable chips are unclockable.

Not true. DOAs are caused by damage in transit - not at the fab - those ones are filtered out and never get that far. Of the chips made, between 10 and 50% could have an issue of some kind. This article goes into detail about the process of making a die and binning - quite interesting: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...and-to-shelf/1
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