After establishing its research and development (R&D) facility in Bangalore, India, about a year ago, Advanced Micro Devices is looking forward to build a plant that would test and assembly processors in the country. The plans reflect AMD’s strong intention to boost its manufacturing capacities as well as market share and may also give AMD abilities to sell more processors to Indian government.

“The next logical step for us is to set up a chip production facility here as and when the market grows big enough for the investment,” Ajay M Marathe, President AMD India, told Deccan Herald news-paper.

According to the paper, a test and assembly fab would cost AMD about $50 million. In order to be economically feasible the plant should process about 5 million of chips per year. AMD reportedly plans to build the facility once the number of computers used in India increases to 30 million units up from today’s 15 million.

AMD sold about 36 million of microprocessors in 2004. The company has test and assemble facilities in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and China, while its chips itself are made in Germany. Recently AMD’s chief executive officer told a German news-paper that his company may build its third foundry in the state of Saxony.

Sunnyvale, California-based AMD already operates AMD India Engineering Centre Private Limited, where future generations of microprocessors are developed. By the end of this year the R&D centre is expected to hire about 120 specialists.