FOLLOW UP: AMD Denies Manufacturing Operations Spin Off Plan.

Dirk Meyer, the new chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, said in an interview with a news-paper that the company would spin off its manufacturing operations in months time as a part of its asset smart strategy. This is the first confirmation of the expected action by AMD’s high-ranking executive.

Austin American Statesman news-paper quotes Mr. Meyer as saying that “the company is just months away from a major restructuring that will spin the manufacturing operations off into a separate company, with new ownership”. It remains to be seen whether there will be one or two owners of the “AMD Semiconductor” company or the parent chipmaker will just make initial public offering (IPO) and issues new shares.

“Hector said he will be the most disappointed man on Earth if it [spin off – X-bit labs] is not done by the end of the year, and I will be the second most  disappointed. It certainly needs to happen to remove this cloud over our head relative to the financial viability of the company,” said Mr. Meyer.

Modern fab that makes chips using state-of-the-art process technologies costs several billions of dollars to build and costs hundreds of millions to operate. After spinning off the manufacturing operations, AMD will be able to concentrate solely on development of its central processing units, graphics processing units, chipsets and platforms.

But in-house developed process technologies allow developers of chips to more precisely “meet” their designs to manufacturing processes, which ultimately means higher performance and faster time-to-market.

Despite of the fact that AMD confirmed intention to virtually sell its fab in Germany, there are a lot more details that remain under wraps today and that should be revealed only in several months from now.