Korean media is suggesting “the most potential candidates” to pick up AMD’s one-time manufacturing wing, Global Foundries, will be local legends Samsung and SK Hynix. The reports of the company’s largest shareholder trying to offload its stake in the third largest semiconductor foundry in the world came out last week, and the rumours are gaining momentum of control shifting to South Korea.

There had been some expectation that buyers from China would be supremely interested in gaining control over the one-time AMD foundry, but because of existing trade tensions between the US and China it seems unlikely that ATIC, the company controlling 90% of GloFo stock, would authorise a sale to a Chinese operation. ATIC is a state-run business operated by the United Arab Emirates, but GloFo is still headquartered in Santa Clara, so selling to a US-friendly South Korean enterprise is far more likely.

Things have been going south for Global Foundries as it struggles to keep up with contract manufacturing rivals, TSMC. Indeed it gave up on the expensive chase for 7nm process technology last year, ceding large chunks of AMD silicon production to TSMC, such as the 7nm AMD Navi graphics chips and parts of the Ryzen 3000 CPUs.