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Only Real Men Have Fabs: AMD’s Dresden Fabs Set to Remain Online

AMD Denies Possibility of Selling Off Fabs in Dresden

by Anton Shilov
06/21/2007 | 03:26 PM

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Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second largest producer of x86 microprocessors, said in a statement that it would not sell off its chip-producing factories in Germany even when the company’s financial situation is far from being positive. The comment comes after several analysts expressed opinions that AMD would sell its fabs and outsource manufacturing to contract chip producers.

“Dresden remains technologically most advanced manufacturing facility and the cornerstone of AMD’s processor manufacturing. Nothing will change here. Different reports miss any base and are complete rumours. The same applies to appropriate analyst reports. In order to make it completely clear, we expressed once: ‘only real men have fabs’,” a statement by AMD claims, according to Golem.de web-site.

The proclamation came after a number of reports from analysts and the press claiming that AMD may decide to switch to fabless model of business and eventually sell off its chip manufacturing factories in Dresden. But while AMD’s financial condition is far from the best, the company still seems to be focused on growth rather than on survival.

Contract semiconductor manufactures like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) develop so-called bulk process technologies that are tailored for usage model of a chip, but are not tailored for its micro-architecture. But supplying state-of-the-art x86 chips requires developers of those chips and appropriate process technologies to work very closely together and tailor both for each other.

Once questioned about Cyrix, a maker of x86 microprocessors that is now a part of Via Technologies, the founder of AMD, Jerry Sanders said: “Only real men have fabs,” implying that a microprocessor company without its manufacturing facilities is set to collapse. Via Technologies now proudly commands no more than 0.3% of the x86 microprocessor market.

On the other hand, ATI, graphics product group of AMD, and Nvidia Corp. manage to create extremely advanced chips with hundreds of millions of transistors using bulk process technologies of TSMC and UMC just because of their rich intellectual property.

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