14 DAY TRIAL // Recent rumors that leaked in the press reveal a possible AMD foundry switch from GlobalFoundries to TSMC, since sources in the industry speak of troubles in building the 14nm wafers at GlobalFoundries, while TSMC still offers reliable 16nm FinFET wafers used by NVIDIA and Apple.
Probably to counter this wild rumor, the UAE-owned company confirmed that it managed to tape-out the first chips using the company’s 14nm LPP (low power plus) manufacturing technology.
To prove these wild rumors of AMD leaving GlobalFoundries aren't true, the Taiwanese foundry company insisted that the chips produced demonstrated “excellent” performance and yields, and said there were no issues that may prompt AMD to abruptly switch to TSMC. As we mentioned before, the main chips GlobalFoundries is referring to are more or less the AMD’s “Zen” processors.
According to KitGuru, the 14nm LPP process technology has been developed by Samsung Foundries and licensed to GlobalFoundries, and it allows chip designers to create more complex system-on-chips that run at up to 10% higher clock-rates and feature a lower power consumption.
GlobalFoundries are effectively taping out the new AMD “Zen”
GlobalFoundries plans to set the qualification of the new performance-enhanced technology for the second half of 2015, and barely in 2016 will the volume ramp up.
To link things up with AMD, the company confirmed earlier this summer that it had taped out it first 14nm FinFET products and it may very well start producing its code-named “Sumit Ridge” CPUs that will carry the now famous eight “Zen” cores and will be marketed under the “FX” and “Opteron” brands later next year.
Graphics-wise, AMD will have its future “Greenland” GPUs use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s 16nm FinFET+ (CLN16FF+). Additionally, the HBM2 memory stacks that will be applied to the TSMC chips will be built at SK Hynix in Korea.
In other words, GlobalFoundries has made sure the world knows that they still have a strong relationship with AMD despite the press believing otherwise.