In a significant development, AMD reportedly disclosed at the Financial Analyst Day event that it has begun manufacturing its "Trinity" accelerated processing units (APUs) at IBM's foundries. With the creation of Global Foundries, AMD went fabless, relying on Global Foundries (its former manufacturing division) and the likes of TSMC to manufacture its products. Till date, Global Foundries has handled manufacture of most of AMD's CPU products, and socket FM1 APUs, while BGA APUs and chipset have been manufactured at TSMC.

What makes AMD's partnership with IBM for manufacturing a significant development is the fact that IBM can handle high-volume production, and has a proven track-record with semiconductor manufacturing process R&D, it also holds a wide range of silicon fabrication IP, rivaled only by Intel. Chips manufactured at IBM will only add to the volumes created by Global Foundries, Big Blue won't completely replace it as AMD's foundry partner. The ability to ship in greater volumes plays a significant role in scoring design wins, apart from pure performance of the product. For example, Lenovo would want to be absolutely sure you can ship in large quantities before designing a major product around your chip.

Source: Xbit Labs