The chief of Advanced Micro Devices’ subsidiary in Dresden, Germany, said in an interview that his company was planning to invest additional money into its facilities in Dresden to boost the manufacturing capacities and that the final decision regarding the plan to build the third fab in the region was to be made in summer.

A report over Heise Online that cites interview with Hans Deppe, who is AMD Saxony vice president and general manager, to Sдchsische Zeitung news-paper, claims that the Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker is planning to expand and upgrade its two chip plants in Dresden at a faster pace than expected and is prepared to invest additional billions of dollars to achieve this.

The company had announced that it was prepared to invest a total of $5.8 billion (Ђ4.7 billion) in the period up to 2008 to expand and upgrade manufacturing facilities at a scale larger than originally planned, according to Mr. Deppe.

According to his statements the energy supply of the two existing foundries, the Fab 30 and the Fab 36, will be upgraded yet again. The clean rooms of the two factories would receive new equipment that would allow them “to turn out more powerful and above all smaller chips,” Mr. Deppe reportedly declared. It is uncertain whether AMD plans upgrading the Fab 30 to make 300mm wafers and use thinner fabrication technologies, something, which was not planned earlier.

A decision on whether the third AMD factory would be built would be reached in the summer, according to the AMD executive.