Intel in talks to buy GlobalFoundries for about $30B
That's a bit surprising (if not ironic) but I think it may make sense in a way. It's been pretty clear that Mudabala (an Abu Dhabi fund that bought AMD fabs in 2008 which then became GlobalFoundries) wanted to unload that investment after they stopped shoving money into failed process developments (GloFo licensed their 14nm from Samsung as a reminder after their own 14 failed, and their 7nm failed too), so no surprise on their end.From Intel's perspective, there are also some US assets from IBM, which GloFo "acquired" in 2014 (for -1.5 billion at the time), which includes some oldish US fabs, but also a patent portfolio. It certainly goes into the current US political narrative that Gelsinger has been pushing.But perhaps more importantly, I think that what Intel is buying is what was sorely lacking them : people and a methodology of working with external customers.
From all I've heard over the years, Intel's process and design teams are so insular and out of touch with the rest of the industry's practices that they had a terrible time just working with customers. It wasn't pretty when they tried the two previous time to open up their process. Loads of announcements, few products if any coming out, and when it worked, they ended up buying their customers anyway, see Altera.If Intel truly wants to go in the foundry direction, they'll get some interesting outside experience, and while it may not make sense from a pure process point of view, considering how much of a sore point their inability to make it work has been on their previous attempts, the idea may have a lot of merit.Perhaps a very smart move from Gelsinger, time will tell, in the meantime I'll have a laugh at Intel buying AMD's old fabs :)