What unusual thing was happening as of recently, is that legacy processes up to 90nm began "coming back back from the dead," because the bleeding edge became so "congested" by very few behemoth consumers with exclusive deals with fabs: GPUs, top tier phone SoCs, and high end network switch chips.<p>On my memory, 65nm was the last process on which a "cookie cutter SoC" was still a good business. But with more opportunities coming up in "niche microcontroller" market today, thanks to boom in "smart things," a generic cheap low power process might too become a viable business again.<p>GloFo might have just noticed that, and are trying to capitalise by being first in the new niche: tier 1 fab service on cost optimised legacy process.<p>They were already the biggest fab for companies to whom always getting the best process is not raison d'etre, who can't afford gigantic MOQs of last gen processes.<p>So they were picking up whomever TSMC was losing due to MOQs, and lack of first class treatment. TSMC was too greedy putting so much focus on work with tier 1 superplayers.<p>Question thought, what will this mean for their no. 1 customer...? Though they announced them moving to TSMC, their 7nm might still not materialise for quite some time, and they still have to make their low end chip tapeouts somewhere.