GlobalFoundries

GlobalFoundries was created from AMD's manufacturing arm and does not sell its own branded processor. It manufactures wafers for fabless customers on specialty technologies such as RF silicon-on-insulator, FD-SOI, and silicon photonics, plus automotive-qualified flows.

TSMC and Samsung concentrate on the leading edge, so a customer that needs a mature or specialty node looks at GlobalFoundries, UMC, and SMIC, subject to export and defense rules. US defense and aerospace programs use GlobalFoundries where a trusted domestic fab is a requirement of the contract.

Long-term capacity agreements reserve wafers years ahead, which is how a fabless chip company secures supply for an automotive or phone radio part. Public funding is supporting added capacity at the New York sites, and those wafers will be allocated under the same kind of multi-year commitments.

Specialty process qualifications lock a customer's chip to GlobalFoundries until a costly port to another fab.

Automotive and defense programs require fabs with the right quality and trusted-supplier status.

Capacity reservation agreements decide who gets wafers when a node is tight.

A fabless team that tapes out on a GlobalFoundries process spends years of design effort they cannot reprint elsewhere quickly.

Automakers depending on a radio or power chip made there have no consumer-brand relationship with the foundry, only a supply risk.