> While there were issues with the Bulldozer design itself from a deep pipeline perspective etc, the other factor in it's lukewarm lifetime (especially the first couple gens) was issues with GloFo's processes even back then.
I think no process could have saved Bulldozer for AMD, it truly was a deeply flawed design IMO, but yep GloFo certainly didn't help. I think my "uncharitable" take was a bit too kind considering.
Specifically in the case of AMD, GloFo relied early on on guaranteed income from AMD through the Wafer Supply Agreement which was stupidly tight (my understanding is that it was part of the deal of selling to Mudabala, though exact details are not public), included a massive volume of must buy from AMD, and didn't include any penalties for GloFo missing deadlines or having their processes underperforming. They definitely coasted on this and I should probably have mentioned this above, since it led to many of their issues going forward till 14nm.
It took them years to manage to loosen the WSA up, the last step was (if I recall correctly ?) loosening the CPU core exclusive that I believe was part of it (they had a carve out for GPUs which were built at TSMC at the time of the sale, though that was supposed to be phased out if my memory is correct, before it was renegociated and AMD moved the low end GPUs there instead, except maybe one gen?).
To their credit, AMD pretty much never bad mouthed GloFo in public. Managing to do the original Ryzen at GloFo and getting as much out of the 14 process that they did is, I think, one of the most underrated engineering tour de force from those who worked on that. While supposedly "copied exact" from Samsung, it wasn't exactly fully there at the time.
I did read that the last renegotiated WSA between AMD and GloFo is supposed to be going on till 2024 (?) currently, so if this goes through, I hope there's a "in case of sale" carve out, if just so anyone can save face a bit ;)
(and that would be a pretty large unburden from AMD in any case, which makes the whole thing even more ironic)
I think no process could have saved Bulldozer for AMD, it truly was a deeply flawed design IMO, but yep GloFo certainly didn't help. I think my "uncharitable" take was a bit too kind considering.
Specifically in the case of AMD, GloFo relied early on on guaranteed income from AMD through the Wafer Supply Agreement which was stupidly tight (my understanding is that it was part of the deal of selling to Mudabala, though exact details are not public), included a massive volume of must buy from AMD, and didn't include any penalties for GloFo missing deadlines or having their processes underperforming. They definitely coasted on this and I should probably have mentioned this above, since it led to many of their issues going forward till 14nm.
It took them years to manage to loosen the WSA up, the last step was (if I recall correctly ?) loosening the CPU core exclusive that I believe was part of it (they had a carve out for GPUs which were built at TSMC at the time of the sale, though that was supposed to be phased out if my memory is correct, before it was renegociated and AMD moved the low end GPUs there instead, except maybe one gen?).
To their credit, AMD pretty much never bad mouthed GloFo in public. Managing to do the original Ryzen at GloFo and getting as much out of the 14 process that they did is, I think, one of the most underrated engineering tour de force from those who worked on that. While supposedly "copied exact" from Samsung, it wasn't exactly fully there at the time.
I did read that the last renegotiated WSA between AMD and GloFo is supposed to be going on till 2024 (?) currently, so if this goes through, I hope there's a "in case of sale" carve out, if just so anyone can save face a bit ;)
(and that would be a pretty large unburden from AMD in any case, which makes the whole thing even more ironic)