Andrew,
AMD has no intention of pulling out of Dresden. Please read the following for more info:
AMD announced Dec. 14 that its board of directors has approved a 10-year plan to invest $1.9 billion and employ more than
1,400 people in a microprocessor center in Dresden, Germany. The decision is subject to final approval by the State of Saxony,
the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Economic Community.
The heart of the center will be an 875,000-square-foot semiconductor wafer fabrication facility and accompanying design center,
which will be built in the first five years at a cost of $1.5 billion. The wafer fab facility will include approximately 90,000 square
feet of clean-room space for the manufacture of future generations of Microsoft® Windows®-compatible microprocessors and
other high volume products.
Chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders said: "This new megafab, designated Fab 30, combined with the Dresden design center, will
give AMD the resources to serve an increasing share of our customers' needs into the next century."
Groundbreaking for the new facility is scheduled for the end of 1996, with production commencing by year-end of 1998. At
maximum capacity, Fab 30 will be capable of producing up to 6,000 eight-inch wafers per week. The facility will start up on
AMD's 0.25-micron process technology and then migrate to 0.18-micron process technology.
"AMD is committed to leadership in the microprocessor market. The microprocessor comprises the largest segment of the
micro-component market, which we expect to account for 25 percent of the $300 billion semiconductor market by the end of the
decade," said Jerry.
The design center in Dresden will conduct research and development activities for future microprocessors and related products.
The Dresden design team will work in concert with teams in Sunnyvale and Austin. Design center operations will begin
approximately two years after groundbreaking.
Fab 30 will be AMD's first wafer manufacturing facility in Europe. Jerry called the Dresden area "an ideal location to establish
our European microprocessor center. There is a pool of highly trained and motivated workers, along with the infrastructure to
support state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing and design activities. This region has excellent institutions of higher
education that we believe will be a source of very talented engineering resources." |
