GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced it has agreed to terms
with AMD to acquire the remaining stake in
GLOBALFOUNDRIES, becoming an independent foundry company.
GlobalFoundries aquired the remaining shares of the
company from AMD, becoming completely independent of AMD.
The agreement, part of an amendment to the commercial
Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with AMD, positions
GLOBALFOUNDRIES as a pure-play semiconductor foundry
company with AMD as one of its primary and strategic
customers. GLOBALFOUNDRIES will now be wholly owned by
the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC).
The new deal will no longer require AMD to make its chips exclusively at Global Foundries. AMD will make a payment of $425 million to GlobalFoundries to waive off the exclusivity deal, incurring a related charge of $703 million in the first-quarter.
The companies also signed a new supply agreement, which waives certain quarterly payments that AMD was to make to GlobalFoundries this year as part of the 2012 wafer supply agreement.
AMD had seen production issues at GlobalFoundries affect output last year.
"Today marks the start of a new era for GLOBALFOUNDRIES
as it becomes a truly independent foundry," said
GLOBALFOUNDRIES CEO Ajit Manocha. "GLOBALFOUNDRIES has a
clear vision to be the leading semiconductor foundry
partner to AMD and one of the world's top technology
companies. We continue to execute on our strategy to
propel ATIC's long-term investment philosophy into true
value creation for our shareholder and customers."
When AMD originally spun off its foundry business in
2008, the resulting Foundry Company was 55.6% ATIC owned
and 44.4% AMD owned.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES has operations in Singapore, Germany and
the United States, with three 300mm and five 200mm fabs.
In January, the company announced plans for more than $3
billion in capital spending in 2012 to fund expansion of
its facilities in Singapore, Germany and New York.
Also in January, the company announced that its newest
300mm manufacturing facility, Fab 8 in New York, started
running the first silicon as part of a new customer
agreement to develop chips for IBM.
The company also achieved several milestones in its
longstanding partnership with ARM, including the first
Cortex-A9 processor operating at more than 2.5GHz on 28nm
high-performance technology, and the first 28nm ARM
Cortex-A9 Processor Optimization Pack (POP) capable of up
to 2GHz on a low-power process geared toward smartphones
and other mobile application.