ATIC has filed a few days ago a petition with the authority of the German competition, a prelude to a complete takeover of GlobalFoundries. The investment company of the Government of Abu Dhabi currently has 65.8% of the smelter, the remaining 34.2% belonging to Texas. This is the logical division made effective in March 2009, but it is probably the recent agreement AMD-Intel and the FTC complaint, which helped put things in running order.

IC Insight has recently published the list of the 25 largest fabless companies (that sell chips, but not casting), AMD occupies the second place, behind Qualcomm. By cutting almost all ties with AMD, GlobalFoundries may win some customers, competitors in Texas currently, or see its last increase their orders, we of course think of NVIDIA. It remains to see how TSMC, the first independent foundry at present, will react...