Not sure if I understood your question correctly. By asking "why are they doing this" do you mean why Globalfoundries is buying old IBM's fabs? Because that's what I'm asking myself right now and I do not know why but I am sure Globalfoundries has its reasons.

Like I said before, IMO, if POET technology comes to commercial production, it should be shared with the industry and not monopolized for many reasons. Globalfoundries having over 160 customers all over the world where are many of the top semiconductor companies, can deliver this disruptive technology to all. On monday we welcomed Ajit Manocha (someting to do with Globalfoundries :D ) and we got news about MS 8 being done and transferred to a 3rd party fab for validation, just a formality, just like with BAE Systems had to validate the army side of POET, if Dr. T can do all this work on his old lab equipment hauled from Bell Labs so for a state of the art facility won't be a problem. And maybe they already know this becuse all of these events were in works for months. So if it's all good then you need a facility to be able to start the production. Just thinking out loud.

Aves, how would you answer your own question? "So WHY are they doing this if POET exists? "

cheers