Industry Expert Blogs

Jerry Sanders, AMD's brash former CEO, once opined, "Real men have fabs. These fabless guys are nobodies, just boys." In recent times, however, Sanders' comments seemed increasingly antiquated, with various foundries (most notably mighty TSMC) serving the fabrication needs of an increasing number and variety of semiconductor device suppliers. A notable number of those suppliers had historically handled their own manufacturing but eventually decided to mothball their fabs and rely on foundries instead. To wit, AMD announced its intent in late 2008 to spin off the chip-manufacturing portion of its business into a separate entity, originally (and unoriginally) called "The Foundry Company" but later renamed Globalfoundries.

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