AMD denies possibility of selling fabs in Dresden

“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.