The supply agreement between AMD and GlobalFoundries: Deadline to 2024, and cancellation of the exclusivity clause
GlobalFoundries as a foundry from AMD has always had related agreements on foundries, such as priority or exclusivity clauses. However, with AMD’s development needs and GlobalFoundries’ own technology research and development issues, its signed supply agreements are constantly being revised.
Recently, AMD disclosed in a document submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it has now revised the content of the wafer supply agreement with GlobalFoundries. According to Anandtech, according to the new terms, the supply period of AMD and GlobalFoundries will extend until 2024. At the same time, the new agreement also sets an annual purchase target. AMD will purchase approximately $1.6 billion worth of wafers from GlobalFoundries between 2022 and 2024. In addition, the new clause does not retain other exclusivity commitments.
This agreement was last revised in January 2019, setting annual procurement targets for 2019, 2020, and 2021. On the other hand, the terms allow AMD to cooperate with other companies and are no longer limited to GlobalFoundries. This allows AMD to partner with TSMC to purchase more advanced process technology (such as 7nm or below) chips, such as CCD and GPU, while AMD retains GlobalFoundries as the exclusive supplier at the process node of 12nm or above.
The updated wafer supply agreement opens up more possibilities for AMD’s procurement, such as the use of more advanced process nodes to produce IODs to achieve higher performance. At present, IODs are mainly produced using GlobalFoundries’ 12LP process, and many users have long expected AMD to use TSMC’s 7nm or below process to manufacture.
As AMD may adopt new I/O standards on the next-generation architecture processors, if AMD continues to use the 12nm process to manufacture, the energy consumption will appear too high. If AMD uses TSMC’s 5nm process to manufacture CCDs, plus 6nm or 7nm processes to manufacture IODs, it is probably an ideal combination.
