Posted on Wednesday, January 20 2010 @ 21:01 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Now that the legal issues with Intel
have been resolved, AMD is free to sell its remaining stake in GlobalFoundries to Abu Dhabi investment vehicle ATIC and become a fabless chip maker. The company currently has a
34.2 percent stake in GlobalFoundries, but a new filing at the German cartel office reveals ATIC is now moving to obtain full owernership of the foundry firm.
"This action is simply consistent with the long-announced plan for AMD to gradually become fab-less, which was one of the key strategies behind the creation of Globalfoundries," Atic said.
"Fab-less" is the industry term used when semiconductor makers design their own products but outsource their manufacture.
AMD spun off its semiconductor manufacturing arm into the joint venture GlobalFoundries, which started operations in March 2009 and has a plant in Dresden, in eastern Germany, as well as Saratoga, New York.
