IBM Contract-Manufacturing Trinity APUs for AMD

[btarunr]

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[NC37]

Oh I can't wait to see how this impacts the market when Trinity launches. Securing a solid supply of APU chips is going to do wonders after Llano was hampered by so many shortages early on.

 

[seronx]

It's not official, yet. So, this is more news to be rather than news that had already occurred. Also, when 28nm APUs and CPUs come out AMD will have access from three places IBM/GlobalFoundries/Samsung+(TSMC).

 

[_JP_]

Are the processors manufactured by IBM going to have a special S/N?

 

[btarunr]

Are the processors manufactured by IBM going to have a special S/N?

Yeah, "Made in Canada".

 

[_JP_]

That should do it for me then. Thanks.

 

[eidairaman1]

This is good news considering the other 2 are having big issues for some reason fabbing the chips.

 

[cadaveca]

SAhould be a step in the right direction, but I wanna see how well these IBM-fabbed chips clock.

 

[xBruce88x]

This is def a good move for AMD. More APUs/CPUs being fabbed means they can sell more, more income for r&d, I think you see where I'm going with this.

Maybe they sboud have IBM do some of their GPUs as well.

 

[xenocide]

It doesn't say which IBM facility is going to make them, there are only a few that can...

 

[AsRock]

This is def a good move for AMD. More APUs/CPUs being fabbed means they can sell more, more income for r&d, I think you see where I'm going with this.

Maybe they sboud have IBM do some of their GPUs as well.

Sounds like a great move, the word Cyrix keeps popping in my head J/K.