Are you saying that AMD cannot partner with both IBM and UMC?
You think IBM wants its technology to go out the front door with AMD employees and into UMC's backdoor by other AMD employees?
What has most likely happened is that AMD was required to pony up about $500,000,000 to UMC to help pay for the 300 mm wafer fab in Singapore that was part of their "deal".
AMD has realized that they cannot afford to part with $500 million in cash - on top of the fact that their CPU volume is in steep decline.
Thus, they are trying to conserve capital (all of it borrowed, at this point) and get out from under a severe overcapacity situation in the future should they end up with partial ownership of a huge fab that will not be needed due to declining AMD CPU volumes.
With IBM, I assume AMD will "pay as they go" for joint development costs, incurring a smaller negative cah flow and reducing the possibility of a huge $500,000,000 payout to UMC.
On top of this, I'd guess that AMD worked for over a year with UMCs technology - and finally came to the conclusion that Elmer did over a year ago - it (UMCs technology) is unacceptable for high performance SOTA CPUs.
-SZ
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