News AMD sets GlobalFoundries free

AMD has sold its stake in GlobalFoundries, while agreeing an end to APU manufacturing exclusivity.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2012/03/05/amd-sets-globalfoundries-free/1

 

finally they can stop subsidising GF.... been a big negative on the balance sheet for a few years now

 

So if they are now spun off, who holds the x86 licence AMD or GF?

 

AMD ofc - GF are a fab company

 

Do you think AMD if they return to make a massive profit will ever build their own fabs again?

 

Bit surprised to find they are paying GF $425 million? Normally you just sell shares to make money - I take it that's not going to happen in this case unless the shares are worth more then $425 million.

That said I bet the accountants are able to put the share costs and the GF payoff fee on different lines of the balance sheet to make it look like AMD made lots of money.

 

As Harlequin said, AMD. That's one of their few postives right now - they're one of 3 x86 license holders on the planet. That said, I don't know that competition would be particularly fierce if AMD decided to give it up tobecome ATI again (in practice, if not in name.) If they don't get their act together within the next couple generations, watch the rumor mill spin up on that one.

If GF is doing so well, what's the motivation here? Seems like that would have been a healthy contribution to the balance sheet. Is it as DbD said, where they're playing some accounting tricks to make it look like they just made a killing? Buying out SeaMicro seems like a good sign, in a way - they're not afraid to drop some cash to get into a new market. Maybe I'm just hoping for a repeat of the glory days when Intel made a stupid mistake and AMD stomped them for a couple years <sigh>

 

Flux - AMD are going down the road of Fusion - something that intel cant compete with ; an ARM offeringis in the works (mirco server company purchase leaing there) , and full SoC.

 

Strange...but the decision to go fabless was strange from the beginning.
(As AMD had a very close knit design-and-production system, with the chip designs basically built around what they could manufacture)
They also tried outsourcing before and failed miserably.

It'd be interesting to know how manny percent of GF's manufacturing is AMD-based.
I don't know it for sure but I hear it's well over 90%, which makes the entire spin-off a financial dabble at best.