AMD and Global Foundry sign a $1.6 billion semiconductor purchase agreement

It is revealed that AMD has renewed a silicon wafer purchase agreement with GlobalFoundries, a major semiconductor manufacturer. AMD plans to purchase $1.6 billion worth of semiconductors from Global Foundry between 2022 and 2024.

AMD has signed a purchase contract with Global Foundry in 2019 until 2024, including the purchase target for 2019-2021. According to information released by AMD to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 13, 2021 (local time), AMD has renewed its contract with Global Foundry and set a new $1.6 billion semiconductor purchase target between 2022 and 2024 .

Reportedly, the contract between AMD and Global Foundry is binding on both sides, and AMD must purchase semiconductors for the amount specified in the contract, and Global Foundry must supply the semiconductors for the amount specified in the contract to AMD.

The Ryzen 5000 series CPU core, a desktop CPU released by AMD in October 2020, uses a semiconductor made by TSMC 7nm manufacturing process. However, as Global Foundry stopped its 7nm manufacturing process in 2018, AMD is expected to see it slowly disappear from Global Foundry.

However, the Epic series I/O die, which is a server CPU developed by AMD, uses semiconductors manufactured by the Global Foundry 14nm manufacturing process. According to analysts, semiconductors manufactured by the Global Foundry 14nm manufacturing process are being used in many of the chips developed by AMD, and in chip development businesses such as Intel and Nvidia, it is common to use semiconductors manufactured at process nodes other than the latest version. It is pointed out that there is no doubt about the use of GlobalFoundry semiconductors that do not follow the latest process nodes.

The Epic series is attracting attention in the professional market, and large companies such as Google and Cloud Flare are gaining popularity as they have announced their adoption of the Epic series one after another. AMD’s market share in the server CPU market has been growing since 2006. The renewal of this contract between AMD and Global Foundry can be seen as a result of this advancement by AMD. Related information can be found here.