Globalfoundries might sell to Samsung or SK Hynix

[Bananasplit_00]

sauce: https://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/27084-globalfoundries-kan-saljas-till-samsung-och-sk-hynix

 

Sweclockers reports that Globalfoundries biggest investor, ATIC, is looking to sell of Globalfoundaries after loosing its biggest customer, AMD, to TSMC. Not being able to deliver on 7nm lost them AMD and with that they have fallen so far behind that ATIC are looking to cash out. 

 

Sauce is in Swedish, translation done by me.

 

Original quotes:

 

Quote

Inom halvledarindustrin dagsläget finns tre stora kontraktstillverkare som investerar i och utvecklar det senaste inom tillverkningsteknik. En av dessa är Globalfoundries, som på senare tid drabbats av vissa motgångar som bland annat lett till att de lagt ned utvecklingen av 7 nanometer.

Quote

En stor majoritet av Globalfoundries ägs av Advanced Technology Investment (ATIC), ett statligt investeringsbolag som ägs av Förenade Arabemiraten. Enligt uppgift ska de ha börjat överväga en försäljning efter att tillverkaren förlorade en av sina största kunder AMD till TSMC.

 

Translated quotes:

Quote

Today there are three big contract manufacturers that invest and develop the latest in manufacturing. One of these is Globalfoundries, that has in later times been hit by some obstacles that have lead to stopping development of the 7nm process.

Quote

A large majority of Globalfoundries is owned by Advanced Technology Investment(ATIC), a state owned investment company owned by the United Arab Emirates. Acording to sources they have started considering selling after the manufacturer lost its biggest customer AMD to TSMC.

 

 

This is surprising to me, never though one of the biggest names in fabs would just sell, its going to be interesting to see if the choose SK Hynix or Samsung. If they go with Samsung there would be an almost 50/50 split of the market between Samsung and TSMC with a coupple smaller guys picking up the last coupple percent, SK Hynix would be interesting to see them sell too though IMO. The sale isnt confirmed yet so it might not happen, so far it seems they are only considering it.

 

So what are your guys thoughts on this, do you think GloFo will sell or will they keep going?

[LukeSavenije]

random thought: aren't there more things from amd that aren't made by TCMC? like polaris, addon chips, chipsets, like that?

[Quadriplegic]

3 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

random thought: aren't there more things from amd that aren't made by TCMC? like polaris, addon chips, chipsets, like that?

The IO die on the upcoming Zen 2 chips should be still be manufactured by GloFo. I believe AMD is still using GloFO for 12 nm die of GloFo

[Cereal5]

If Samsung comes out with Globalfoundries... they'll have a solid grasp on way too much of the tech market lmao.

 

edit: Here are a couple of the first links I found in English

 

Edited February 20, 2019 by Cereal5

[Stefan Payne]

...and there was also a report that it wouldn't be sold.

 

Sadly GF never really took off and was mostly a desaster, especially for AMD (32nm late and other shit)...

 

Well, can only be better if GF gets sold to someone who really wants/needs the fabs to do their fabbing...

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

2 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

...and there was also a report that it wouldn't be sold.

 

Sadly GF never really took off and was mostly a desaster, especially for AMD (32nm late and other shit)...

 

Well, can only be better if GF gets sold to someone who really wants/needs the fabs to do their fabbing...

That looks scarily close to a monopoly though, especially if it's Samsung who buys them

[Stefan Payne]

Just now, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

That looks scarily close to a monopoly though, especially if it's Samsung who buys them

people here don't seem to have a Problem with other Monopolys though.

So I don't get where the hate against Samsung comes from...

There are others that are even worse than Samsung where people don't seem to care about their dominance, their monopoly...

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

1 minute ago, Stefan Payne said:

people here don't seem to have a Problem with other Monopolys though.

So I don't get where the hate against Samsung comes from...

There are others that are even worse than Samsung where people don't seem to care about their dominance, their monopoly...

Speaking for myself at least, I don't like the monopolies but there's nothing to be done.

[Stefan Payne]

2 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Speaking for myself at least, I don't like the monopolies but there's nothing to be done.

Yes, there is: NOT Buying their stuff!

 

 

There are always alternatives available...

People just need to buy them and not the Monopolists...

 

 

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

2 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Yes, there is: NOT Buying their stuff!

 

 

There are always alternatives available...

People just need to buy them and not the Monopolists...

 

 

Be that as it may, 99.9% of people don't care, so me doing it isn't really going to matter

[RejZoR]

12 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

That looks scarily close to a monopoly though, especially if it's Samsung who buys them

It's not monopoly really. There are other foundries as well (Intel and Samsung already have them). If Samsung buys them, they'd just be more self sufficient. What would be a monopoly is if only foundry left is TSMC. Then it would be a monopoly on their end.

[suicidalfranco]

the future will be composed of only a handful of mega conglomerates waiting to attempt to buy each other out

[Stefan Payne]

Facebook, Twitter and other companys have shown that in the IT, it tends to monopolize in some areas without much alternatives...

 

[LePawel]

3 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Facebook, Twitter and other companys have shown that in the IT, it tends to monopolize in some areas without much alternatives...

 

It's easier to monopolise social trends, what's "cool" and software than hardware and engineering. once you reach majority in a market as crucial to modern economy as chip manufacturing you can basically control how fast world develops computationally.

Look at what Shintel's done before Ryzen came out.

[martward]

43 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Yes, there is: NOT Buying their stuff!

 

 

There are always alternatives available...

People just need to buy them and not the Monopolists...

 

 

Well that's kind of the problem right, not buying their stuff usually means either getting worse quality or paying more. Nobody likes monopolies, but people dislike paying too much or getting worse stuff even more.

 

42 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Be that as it may, 99.9% of people don't care, so me doing it isn't really going to matter

Well that's way too easy of an argument though. If you actually really care than you should act on it without being influenced by what other people do. 

[pas008]

4 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Yes, there is: NOT Buying their stuff!

 

 

There are always alternatives available...

People just need to buy them and not the Monopolists...

 

 

Whatm

This is dumbest thing i have heard

 

Buy shitty expensive items just because you are against monopolies as a whole?

[Taf the Ghost]

Samsung probably makes more sense given the technicals, but it would be an interesting expansion for SK Hynix. GloFo is a contract foundry but they are the 3rd largest in the world still. 

[Bananasplit_00]

51 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

wait, the whole of GoFlo or a few of the fab facilities? o_o

all of the production. there might be something left in ATICs hands afterwards but as i see it its a sale of the entire company pretty much

[S w a t s o n]

Fucking dumbass saudis (Emiratis?) make GF cancel 7nm just before it's ready and now a couple months later just want out? Holy shit I mad, they fucked GF over and now they want to wash their hands of their bad decisions.

[dalekphalm]

Thought: Wait until GloFo tanks hard due to moron management, and then AMD comes in and buys them back at a stupid discount.

 

And then fire the entire upper management and rebuild GloFo from the top down.

[Stefan Payne]

10 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Thought: Wait until GloFo tanks hard due to moron management, and then AMD comes in and buys them back at a stupid discount.

And then fire the entire upper management and rebuild GloFo from the top down.

Probably won't be happening as they sold it for a reason.

And you see at Intel how many Problems they have with new processes.

 

Without your own fabs you can choose where you make your stuff freely and don't have to pay the high cost for R&D and maintaining the fabrication stuff. If you don't have anyone other than yourself and you don't sell very much it is an enormous problem...

 

SO it doesn't make sense for AMD (yet) to buy them back.

[dalekphalm]

8 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Probably won't be happening as they sold it for a reason.

And you see at Intel how many Problems they have with new processes.

True - but the reason they sold GloFo was due to dire financial situations and they wanted to streamline the company. Granted, buying it back (especially with current value) goes against their own interests, but at a low enough cost, it's definitely possible.

8 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Without your own fabs you can choose where you make your stuff freely and don't have to pay the high cost for R&D and maintaining the fabrication stuff. If you don't have anyone other than yourself and you don't sell very much it is an enormous problem...

Also true, but being fabless has it's own problems.

 

1. You're reliant on a third party, and you're not in control of the R&D. If you need a new node for a new product, and they fuck up R&D, you may be screwed. Case in point: GloFo screwing up 7nm - them going to TSMC was a backup plan.

2. You're still paying at least part of the R&D costs - the fab is definitely passing on the cost to it's customers. At best, it's spread out among multiple customers.

3. If the fab you were intending on using has some issue, retooling your design for a different fab is not painless, and does take some amount of time and money.

 

Besides, owning a fab doesn't mean you can't also still use third parties. The main reason AMD was stuck with GloFo was due to a supply contract - they signed a deal guaranteeing that they would buy certain levels of silicon.

 

If AMD owned GloFo, they would not be limited to a supply contract. They could choose to still go to Samsung or TSMC for some of their products.

8 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

SO it doesn't make sense for AMD (yet) to buy them back.

Indeed - the entire scenario rests on the idea that GloFo essentially goes bankrupt or otherwise tanks so badly that AMD can buy them for a bargain.