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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

> I find the characterization "home grown" as a stretch here, had they designed their own instruction set etc I might agree.

Would you say the same thing about Apple, who has their own ARM uarch?

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The only really useful distinction that can be made here is between companies that have architecture licenses, and therefore can design their own uarch, and companies with any other kind of arm license.

Apple is also a TSMC customer I believe.

So is AMD (they're shutting down GloFlo).

I'm not sure how they could shut down GloFo, considering they don't own it.

Besides, GloFo is still doing decently even if they've dropped 7nm... high-end isn't the whole chip market. And AMD is still using GloFo for non-7nm designs.

AMD's strategy of using multiple Zen 2 dies (7nm) tied together by a 14nm I/O die (since I/O doesn't scale down quite as well) is a really interesting strategy to improve yields using smaller dies (rather than making huge, low yield chips like the competition) & reduce mask/production cost. One 7nm Zen 2 mask can be used to produce CPU cores for a multitude of SKUs, optimizing for different markets using (cheaply customized) I/O interconnects made on 14nm.

This allows for AMD to keep much less silicon on hand for stocking the myriad of SKUs, as the only bottleneck for ramping up production of a SKU is producing those I/O interconnects on 14nm, which is a well understood process.

I think you replied to the wrong comment, but this also allows AMD to manufacture the IO die with glofo, which saves cost not only because 14nm capacity is much higher, but also since AMD's agreement with glofo requires them to pay a fee for every wafer they manufacture with another fab.

Word on the street is they're dropping that part of the AMD/GloFlo WSA.

https://wccftech.com/amd-is-negotiating-a-7th-amendment-to-t...

Source? GloFo stopped pursuing 7nm but that is far from shutting down.

Everyone working on R&D either got laid off, or moved to sustaining engineering on existing nodes. AMD is doing 7nm on TSMC. That's about as shut down as foundries get since the capital investment is all up front.

AMD is a TSMC customer but GlobalFoundries is far from shutting down.

AMD isn't shipping any new GloFlo processors, and GloFlo either laid off or shifted their all of their R&D to sustaining.

That's as close to shutting down as foundries get.

I thought they spun it off?

They did, but recently GloFlo announced that they're stopping R&D on newer nodes and are switching purely to sustaining engineering.

Yes.

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