Global Foundries, what was once the manufacturing arm of AMD is now a separate company. Global Foundries will keep manufacturing CPUs for AMD but it also needs other partners to help bear the cost of tooling for new process nodes and building new factories. The first of such partners is ST Microelectronics, once widely known for manufacturing the Kyro graphics chips and the similar chips based on PowerVR technology that were found on the Sega Dreamcast console.
STMicro will be a customer of the low power process nodes, different from the ones AMD will be using for it's CPUs and future GPUs, and aimed mainly at SoCs for ultra low power devices. Global Foundries is hoping other partners will jump in, as it will need a good number of them to recoup the $4 billion it will invest in the New York fab it is building, which is expected to go online by 2012.
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