After AMD presented its financial results, AMD announced another very positive news for the company and is nothing other than the update of the so-called WSA or Wafer Supply Contract, which provides for a new wafer supply contract from GlobalFoundries in several different lithographic processes, exempting AMD from certain binding agreements with the foundry.
Although the agreement is largely based on the long-term strategic alliance of AMD and GlobalFoundries at their 12 nm and 14 nm, this time we will start this article with the most important at the beginning, the new agreement for 7 nm and below.
The big news of the latest WSA update is that AMD can use this update to commission any smelter to produce chips at 7 nm and smaller nodes at 7 nm.
AMD has had to pay GlobalFoundries for hiring TSMC to bring its technology to 7 nm because in the previous ESC it switched the agreement with the first and its supposed 7 nm, which were never finally reached, but the agreement was still in force.
In any case, it’s good news that this agreement has been updated, especially as AMD now has the ability to cast without penalties.
As part of this new agreement, AMD has agreed on new prices and volumes for the wafers it will source from the US smelter until at least 2021, while the agreement remains in force until March 1, 2024. An important aspect of the agreement is that if AMD fails to meet the annual wafer purchase target for 2019, 2020 and 2021, GlobalFoundries will have to pay a portion of this difference between actual and planned wafer purchases.