Globalfoundries withdraws from chip manufacturing at 7nm

After AMD migrated all 7nm chip manufacturing from GlobalFoundries to TSMC, we knew something was cooking at the Santa Clara, California-based manufacturer.

GloblFoundries will stop developing nodes at 7nm

GlobalFoundries has announced that it will stop developing nodes at 7nm, to focus only on existing and well established processes.

Of all the existing semiconductor manufacturers, TSMC is in the lead, and the Taiwanese company has already received orders from Apple and, most importantly, AMD. AMD's 7nm Zen 2, Vega and EPYC CPUs will be manufactured by TSMC instead of GlobalFoundries, so they were no longer going to receive orders to chip with this new node. Focusing on existing 12 and 14 nm nodes seems to be the most logical decision.

GlobalFoundries also announced the decision to separate the ASIC division as a subsidiary

In the past, AMD bought IBM's manufacturing business a couple of years ago and had promised to make all of IBM's server chips. Now that 7nm operations are suspended, the question is what will happen to the deal with IBM?

This relates to the company's decision to transform its ASIC business into a subsidiary that will be separate from the factory's main operations. According to GlobalFoundries, the ASIC division, among other things, "will provide customers with access to alternative casting options starting at 7nm."

This suggests that at least one of the company's current customers is affected by its decision to stop 7nm, and that customer could be IBM. The next IBM Power11 CPU is said to require 7nm, though the chip won't arrive for another year or two.

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