According to a new report released by Citigroup, AMD could stop producing CPUs in its own fabs and as a result they might enter what can be called the "fabless" era. This is not a new case since one of the biggest
GPU manufacturers, Nvidia has no manufacturing capabilities and relies on groups such as TSMC and UMC in
order to produce the 7 and 8 series GPUs.
As it turns out, AMD has been investing a lot in the development segment but also in capacity both in America and Germany. However the fact that they managed to delay the R600 series and the 65nm Brisbanes a lot rises some questions regarding their actual manufacturing capabilities.
Rolled out earlier, the Citigroup report created by one of their analysts, Gleny Yeung, tells readers that AMD has actually confirmed that they plan to sell some of its manufacturing capacity in Dresden and New York in order to roll back most of its manufacturing capabilities. As a result the chip maker could end up relying more and more on TSMC and Chartered.
Regarding this very issue, AMD claimed the following: "We're looking to find ways to extend [the outsourced] model beyond research and development to the full range of the manufacturing supply chain... That could [extend] from increasing the amount of processors we send out for chartered manufacturing and could also include things like establishing partnerships on the manufacturing side."
INTEL on the other hand has always been a monster chipmaker due to its extremely large fabs which were able to produce most of the needed quantity of CPUs in any given time frame. Throughout its history INTEL has invested a lot in manufacturing capabilities and as a result had no issues with numbers. Unfortunately that is not the case of AMD and market studies are showing a constant decrease in both revenues and percentage and due to the superiority of INTEL chips, this situation might continue for a while.
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