News AMD to spin-off fabrication?

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/07/24/amd-to-spin-off-fabrication/1

Comments by AMD CEO Dirk Meyer and CFO Bob Rivet lead to rumours that the company is planning to spin-off its manufacturing ability into a wholly separate company.

 

There are going to be a lot of tough decisions to be made at AMD to keep it going.
Long term it is better to keep the fabs, but if they don't make it past the short term then long term does not matter.

 

Quote:
"the company relies on IBM to build and test chips based on a 300mm wafer size"

errr, it develops future technology together with IBM (east Fishkill)...before that with Motorola.

Production however (300mm) is in Dresden-Germany, also production development (APC).
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/AboutAMD/0,,51_52_9999_10000,00.html

Also some processors of lower complexity are (were?...sempron) built in Singapore (Chartered)

 

I see this as being a bad move for AMD. Having in-house fabs has numerous advantages, not the least of which being lower productions costs and better control over the development of the manufacturing process, both of which are things that AMD is going to need desperately in the future.

*EDIT* It seems that AMD is denying reports that it's going to sell off its fabs.

Source: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/AMD-Denies-Fab-Sell-Off/

 

...besides, the Fabs are de-facto companies of their own (for instance FAB36 is a Company founded on german (saxon) coroprate laws):
AMD Saxony LLC & Co. KG

Oh what a great eweek article:
Quote: In the chip business, manufacturing eats up a vast chunk of the revenue

yeah...it's also the only part that generates revenue in the first place...these people are selling hardware, not ideas.

Quate: AMD converted its Fab 25 in Austin, Texas, into a facility that is now making flash memory for Spansion, a company in which AMD holds a financial stake

Actually AMD founded Spansion, before AMD itself manufactured flash memory (helped it through the downturn before last) before separating the flash-business from the rest and merging it with Fujitsu's flash business to form spansion.
Consisting of AMD'S old microprocessor FAB in Austin (the people that brought you the first aluminum Athlon's, the copper ones coming from Dresden) and Fujitsu's I believe 3 Fabs in Japan.
(more precice, they've worked togethet with fujitsu for over a decade before as FASL)

Ah well...the history of Semiconductor companies is easily forgotten.

 

Ok, and the point of your post was?

 

So the resulting bodies could have been AMD Semiconductor and AMD Microprocessors?

 

I don't think they will sell off the fabs, just change how they do it and how they are made.

 

The point is: they could sell Fabs that are individual companies allready ;-)