AMD not savvy with GlobalFoundry yields

Even though GlobalFoundries has shouted out time and time again that its 32nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) fabrication process doesn't face any sort of problems, an AMD official recently refuted these claims as it stated that GloFo's advanced fabrication node isn't actually where it would need to be in terms of performance, reports softpedia.

"We have been pretty open in that we see room for improvement on the GlobalFoundries side, I think that is very much true," said Thomas Seifert, CFO and former interim CEO of AMD during the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"Performance is not where it needs to be and we are driving them very hard to where we need them to be in order to continue to grow this partnership," concluded the company's rep.

Some of the problems with 32nm production face right now by GlobalFoundries are due to the manufacturing tools issues caused by the former management at AMD, but the foundry is also to blame as is facing a brain drain after losing five leaders of the Dresden Campus in a the span of just 18 months.

As a result of all these production issues, in early April, AMD has revised its deal with GlobalFoundries to go from wafer based pricing to a good chip approach. What this means is that AMD will only pay for the working chips manufactured by the foundry and not for all the wafers (containing working or non-working chips) that come out of production.

Seifert went on to explain that such an arrangement is only natural as their relationship with GlobalFoundries moves to a standard foundry relationship.

He also added that AMD has a similar deal in place with TSMC, which has worked out extremely well.

AMD is GlobalFoundries' largest customer and uses the foundry's production facilities to manufacture CPUs as well as the first generation of Fusion APUs.