Intel In Talks To Purchase GlobalFoundries for $30 Billion

[Uskompuf]

Intel is exploring a deal to purchase GlobalFoundries for roughly $30 billion according to people familiar with the matter, which would serve as Intel's largest acquisition to date. GlobalFoundries is owned by Mubadala Investment Co and it was widely reported that the company was planning an initial public offering later this year. This latest report comes as Intel continues talks with RISC-V chip designer SiFive for a $2 billion purchase as part of a major restructuring effort led by new CEO Pat Gelsinger. Intel is planning to boost its manufacturing capacity with the IDM 2.0 initiative where they have already committed to building two new fabs in Arizona and will offer manufacturing services to other countries. GlobalFoundries currently holds about 7% of the global foundry market by revenue and has several large customers including AMD, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Jack1n]

Going for quantity over quality is certainty a valid strategy considering the current and projected shortages.

 

[newtekie1]

That's kind of come full circle. Global Foundries started as part of AMD, then AMD spun it off into it's own company, and now Intel is buying it up. Crazy.

 

[john_]

Intel sees that the need for chips will just get bigger and bigger in the future. Also I wonder how much GF had gone with their 7nm project before abandoning it.

 

[stimpy88]

Aren't GF even further behind in process tech than Intel?

A strange way to spend 30Bil.

 

[Vya Domus]

Going for quantity over quality is certainty a valid strategy considering the current and projected shortages.

Not for Intel, the "quality" of their manufacturing process has been lacking for years now. And we're not just talking about performance but also yields.

 

[ZoneDymo]

oh no, that is not good, I hope regulators dont let that happen.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

oh no, that is not good, I hope regulators dont let that happen.

Yeah, I agree, but I never have faith in regulators doing what's best.

 

[Richards]

If the deal goes through intel will be unstoppable.. its over for amd they.ll have to beg tsmc for more left overs from apple

oh no, that is not good, I hope regulators dont let that happen.

It will go through intel is an American diamond that needs to be protected

 

[Anymal]

Yeah, I agree, but I never have faith in regulators doing what's best.

Nvidia should forget about ARM. How much for TSMC?

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

oh no, that is not good, I hope regulators dont let that happen.

Nothing a "small" kickback can't "fix".

 

[londiste]

Aren't GF even further behind in process tech than Intel?
A strange way to spend 30Bil.

They may have useful patents or licenses.
On the other hand GF has 8-9 foundries across the globe, including EU and US where building a new one might be even more expensive...

 

[john_]

Aren't GF even further behind in process tech than Intel?

A strange way to spend 30Bil.

They get ready factories in US and EU, also all the customers of GF. That means more customers, more capacity, more influence( in US and EU), maybe more tax gifts from US and EU.

oh no, that is not good, I hope regulators dont let that happen.

Why? There is TSMC and Samsung out there.

its over for amd they.ll have to beg tsmc for more left overs

With GF stopping any further development in 7nm, I don't think it's affecting AMD.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Intel needs this since their foundries cant produce on the same level. Its a two sided dice here, ethically they shouldnt be allowed the acquisition since AMD still uses GF, there could be issues with anti-trust, depends on the contract too, if there is one.

 

[Fouquin]

This is a dangerous consolidation of power. This would eliminate yet another independent market supplier from the supply chain entirely, and give Intel significantly more power to control pricing. GloFo doesn't pursue leading edge nodes anymore but they hold a key corner in the market to price competitively and balance between themselves, Samsung, and TSMC. I expect this to be challenged, but Intel just took a few tens of billions in government money (read taxpayer money) so we'll foot the bill for the costs both up front and in the future if this goes through.


This would also be an IP goldmine for Intel, as well as an incredible safety net since GloFo and TSMC currently share a 10 year cross licensing agreement for decades worth of patents.

 

[Mysteoa]

It's good that AMD has ties with Samsung. If this really goes through, AMD can get out of the Wafer agreement and make one with Samsung

 

[Chrispy_]

Could be for manufacturing Xe GPUs.

Or, if you read between the lines, it could be that Intel's attempts to make 10nm work well have failed, 7nm development may not be going as well as Intel hoped, and this is just an attempt to get more experience/knowledge/IP on board to try and correct that.

 

[Richards]

It's good that AMD has ties with Samsung. If this really goes through, AMD can get out of the Wafer agreement and make one with Samsung

D'not they have a contract obligation to tsmc ? Tsmc will be mad like they where mad need Samsung gave nvidia sweet cheap deal

 

[Chrispy_]

D'not they have a contract obligation to tsmc ? Tsmc will be mad like they where mad need Samsung gave nvidia sweet cheap deal

Yes but the obligation is not limited to exclusive use of TSMC, just a promise to order x over y time period. AMD still do fab stuff with GloFo, and would probably use any foundry that made economic sense.

There's no way AMD is signing an exclusivity deal with any single foundry - it took them the best part of a decade just to get away from GloFo's obligation after spinning them off as an independent business, so they learned that the hard way and the entire point of becoming fabless is to have the flexibility to use any foundry available to them.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Intel needs this since their foundries cant produce on the same level. Its a two sided dice here, ethically they shouldnt be allowed the acquisition since AMD still uses GF, there could be issues with anti-trust, depends on the contract too, if there is one.

Hasnt AMD been spending the better part of a decade trying to get AWAY from GloFo?

If the deal goes through intel will be unstoppable.. its over for amd they.ll have to beg tsmc for more left overs from apple


It will go through intel is an American diamond that needs to be protected

Unstoppable? The thing holding Intel back is a lack of 14nm capacity? I thought it was their inability to get 10nm in any functional capacity and their stubborn refusal to move past skylake.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Not for Intel, the "quality" of their manufacturing process has been lacking for years now. And we're not just talking about performance but also yields.

Is that why a backported architecture on a larger process is still competing with the cutting edge processes?

 

[qubit]

This is ironic, as GF was once AMD's manufacturing arm, just like Intel has, so it's like Intel's indirectly buying part of AMD.

I wonder if this purchase could have a monopoly implication by making Intel too big?

 

[Auer]

Smart move.

Also funny how some ppl think "Intel needs to be stopped".
I'm not gonna spoonfeed this, but if a little research is done it's not hard to see how this can be a good thing.

Let it happen. And let Nvidia get ARM too.

We need consolidated efforts to guarantee chip availability in the future.

 

[Vya Domus]

Is that why a backported architecture on a larger process is still competing with the cutting edge processes?

You have to ask yourself why was an architecture backported to a larger node in the first place before we can answer that, that's almost unheard of.

Clearly something isn't right.

 

[qubit]

Smart move.

Also funny how some ppl think "Intel needs to be stopped".
I'm not gonna spoonfeed this, but if a little research is done it's not hard to see how this can be a good thing.

Let it happen. And let Nvidia get ARM too.

We need consolidated efforts to guarantee chip availability in the future.

I'm not convinced that allowing Intel to acquire GF is a good thing, but I'm not passing judgement either, without more facts.

I agree that NVIDIA acquiring ARM is a good idea though. Just think how fast those CPUs could go with NVIDIA accelerating them like Intel and AMD have with x86 / x64!