Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

AMD’s latest deal with GlobalFoundries could help close the gap with Intel

Jayce Wagner
By

Intel Sandy Bridge wafer
Image used with permission by copyright holder
AMD’s upcoming chips might have a slight edge over competitor Intel, but will it be enough to stay competitive? According to Tom’s Hardware, AMD has just restructured its wafer supply agreement with chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, into a five-year contract with some interesting stipulations.

Both Intel’s Kaby Lake and AMD’s upcoming Zen are chips built on the 14-nanometer node. How they stack up to one another in practice remains to be seen, as Kaby Lake processors are still rolling out and Zen has yet to hit store shelves. But they’re built on the same node size, which ultimately means they’re like fighters in the same weight class.

Recommended Videos

One could easily outperform the other, but they’re coming into the fight on fairly even ground.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

AMD has been in business with GlobalFoundries since 2009, but their most recent agreement has been retooled in a couple interesting ways. First up, it’s not just another annual agreement between the two companies, as they’ve had in the past. AMD’s revamped agreement with GlobalFoundries is a long-term, five-year agreement to order a certain number of wafers each year.

The long-term partnership between the two companies is particularly interesting because GlobalFoundries is skipping the upcoming 10nm node, and going straight for the hotly anticipated 7nm node.

If AMD’s next-gen processors are coming from GlobalFoundries, that means they’re probably going to be on the 7-nanometer node, not the 10nm node which Intel will be using – Intel has heavily invested in the 10nm node, so it’s unlikely they’d skip it entirely.

What does all this mean for your PC? Well, it means that in a few years AMD might have have a slight edge over Intel, with processors that could do a lot more with a lot less. A chip built on the 10nm node could be at a serious disadvantage against a similar processor built on a 7nm node.

Naturally, AMD’s upcoming processor, the Zen+, is more than likely going to remain a 14nm chip. This revamped agreement with GlobalFoundries won’t bear fruit for a while, but it’s definitely an interesting move that could very well change the game for AMD and Intel.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jayce Wagner
Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
Head-to-head: Intel Core i7-12700H vs. AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS
Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X front view showing display and keyboard deck.

Two of the top laptop processors in 2022 are the Intel Core i7-12700H vs AMD Ryzen 6900HS, but with so many other factors impacting laptop performance, it's hard to compare them head to head. So, when Lenovo offered me the opportunity to run the Intel version of its excellent Slim 7 Pro X laptop, which I had previously reviewed in its AMD incarnation, I jumped at the chance to pit two very similar laptops against each other.

I say "very similar" because, unfortunately, they're not identical. Importantly, they both used the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, which means we're directly comparing the CPUs themselves. The most important difference, beyond the processors, was that the AMD version running the Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU enjoyed 32GB of 6400MHz LPDDR5 RAM. The Intel Core i7-12700H version was loaded with "just" 16GB of slower 5200MHz LPDDR5 RAM. That means that while our benchmark results are likely to be close enough to gauge the performance differences, we can't be truly scientific. And the Ryzen 9 6900HS is a lower-power version of that chip while the Core i7 is full-power.

Read more
AMD might deal a huge blow to Intel with new 3D V-Cache CPUs
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

According to a new leak, AMD may be readying up some truly powerful Ryzen 7000 processors equipped with its 3D V-Cache technology.

The rumor suggests that this time around, at least three CPUs are in the works, and they're the top-of-the-line models, including the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D, and Ryzen 7 7800XD. Equipping the already powerful flagships with 3D V-Cache would pose a real threat to Intel's top Raptor Lake CPUs. What can we expect from these gaming beasts?

Read more
Upcoming AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU outperforms Zen 3 by up to 40%
AMD Ryzen processor inside a motherboard.

Thanks to a well-known Twitter tipster, we now have one of our first looks at the performance of two upcoming AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs, the Ryzen 9 7950X and the Ryzen 7 7700X. Thanks to leaked benchmarks, we can compare the new processors to their Ryzen 5000 counterparts.

What's the verdict? So far, it seems that the CPUs have done a spectacular job, beating the previous generation by up to 40%. Can these results be trusted?

Read more