John Docherty is departing his position as Senior Vice President (SVP) of Manufacturing Operations at AMD to join GlobalFoundries (GloFo) as SVP of Global Operations.
Docherty would appear to be a bit of a loss for AMD. He has more than 35 years of semiconductor manufacturing experience and while he was at AMD he had hands-on experience with APU, CPU and GPU manufacturing. His CV includes senior positions at Motorola Semiconductor, LSI Agere Systems and ATI.
However his switch to GlobalFoundries might turn out to be good for both AMD and GlobalFoundries, as a former SVP at AMD he knows exactly what GlobalFoundries’ most prominent customer needs.
Docherty could assist with 14nm FinFET production to ensure it arrives at market sooner. AMD will be relying on 14nm silicon from GlobalFoundries in order to counter Nvidia’s upcoming GPU architecture, codenamed ‘Pascal’, based on TSMC’s 16nm process, which is said to be launching in 2016.
In fact, the whole move could be seen as a vertical integration attempt by AMD who founded GlobalFoundries back in 2009 as a separate company. GlobalFoundries announced a partnership with Samsung back in April to collaborate over the 14nm process.
Docherty would also be interested in taking advantage of the poor relations between Samsung and AMD’s archrival Nvidia, particularly if GloFlo and Samsung have any success with 14nm FinFET.
