Cloud Computing: AMD and Globalfoundries Divorce
AMD is giving up what remains of its ownership of its manufacturing plants, turning its 8.8% position over to the Abu Dhabi owners of Globalfoundries.
AMD will keep getting its chips made by Globalfoundries under a new negotiated take-or-pay wafer pricing commitment through 2013 but it doesn’t have to use Globalfoundries exclusively for certain of its anticipated 28nm APUs.
That concession, following serious 32nm yield, ramp and cost overrun problems at Globalfoundries last year, is going to cost AMD $425 million altogether: $150 million Monday, $50 million July 2, another $50 million October 2 and finally $175 million in 1Q13. As a result it’ll take a one-time charge of $703 million this quarter…


Nebula co-founder and VP of Engineering Devin Carlen and Principal Engineer Joe Heck have been elected to lead two of the six core OpenStack(TM) projects. Engineers from Rackspace and Nicira were elected to lead the other four core projects.