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Global Foundries to produce 7 nm chips for AMD
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10631/amd-amends-globalfoundries-wafer-supply-agreement-through-2020
For the benefit of those who don't follow this closely, Global Foundries got its start in life as Abu Dhabi buying AMD's fabs. Thus, AMD has long had a close relationship with the company, and is contractually obligated to buy products from them until at least 2024. So Global Foundries producing chips for AMD isn't surprising.
What is surprising is the talk about 7 nm. The slides mention 14 nm and 7 nm, but nothing in between. People had generally assumed that after 14 nm comes 10 nm. Maybe the industry decided that 10 nm without EUV was about as pointless as 20 nm without finfets.
For the benefit of those who don't follow this closely, Global Foundries got its start in life as Abu Dhabi buying AMD's fabs. Thus, AMD has long had a close relationship with the company, and is contractually obligated to buy products from them until at least 2024. So Global Foundries producing chips for AMD isn't surprising.
What is surprising is the talk about 7 nm. The slides mention 14 nm and 7 nm, but nothing in between. People had generally assumed that after 14 nm comes 10 nm. Maybe the industry decided that 10 nm without EUV was about as pointless as 20 nm without finfets.
Comments
Global Foundries has now announced themselves that they're jumping from 14 nm to 7 nm. But with their claims of "more than twice the logic density and a 30 percent performance boost", it sounds like die shrinks aren't what they used to be. A decade ago, that's less than the gain you'd hope for by shrinking from 90 nm to 65 nm, jumping ahead one node rather than two.
They did mention EUV, so I may have guessed right on that.
Now the question is whether they can deliver--and what other fabs can deliver. Remember when Global Foundries promised 14 nm in 2014? The first products showed up in 2016, while 14/16 nm chips fabbed at Samsung and TSMC were available in 2015. And Global Foundries had to license Samsung's 14 nm process node to get there, too.