AMD has just announced that it has renegotiated its outsourcing agreement with GlobalFoundries. The new agreement fixes quarterly volumes of wafers for 2011 as well as payment conditions.
For 45nm wafers, AMD will continue to pay a fixed price per wafer, but for the 32nm process, AMD will only pay for founctioning chips. As of 2012, the 32nm process will once again be paid for at a fixed price per wafer, based on production costs + GlobalFoundries’ commission. AMD will in addition pay a quarterly bonus to GloFlo in 2012 if production capacities attain certain objectives.
With this new agreement, AMD is clearly putting pressure on GlobalFoundries when it comes to the 32nm engraving process, whether this be in terms of quality in 2011 or volumes for 2012.
