AMD's German Chip Plant Comes Online

Advanced Micro Devices a distant second to chip leader Intel, has innovated steadily over the past decade to the point where it controls about 20% of the x86 processor market. It now has more ammunition: AMD last week began manufacturing Athlon 64 and Sempron chips at its new 300-mm wafer manufacturing plant in Dresden, Germany, and will increase production to 20,000 wafers a month in 2007.

The plant produces chips on the largest silicon wafers in use, letting the company manufacture more than twice the number of chips per wafer than was possible with 200-mm wafers. The new plant, in combination with an existing plant and capacity it can tap into at contract foundry Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, could let AMD double its processor output over the next three years.

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