UMC Should Be AMD Foundry Partner
By Mark Hachman on January 31, 2002 at 1:27 pm
United Microelectronics Corp. will likely announce a deal to manufacture an unknown amount of AMD processors, according to a media advisory by both companies.
Taiwan foundry UMC and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., have scheduled a conference call at 2:30 PDT today. Although the subject of the call has not been announced, it is virtually certain that the firms will announce a foundry partnership.
In conference calls stretching over the last few quarters, AMD executives have said they plan to employ a foundry partner to manufacture wafers for the company. In its most recent conference call, AMD chairman and chief executive W.J. "Jerry" Sanders said AMD planned to announce the partner before the end of the quarter.
The scope of the deal will be announced later this afternoon. However, in the conference call AMD executives said that the company is selling every Athlon XP that is manufactured. Fab 30 in Dresden, where those chips are manufactured, is still ramping up to its full capacity. It's also possible that AMD wants to make room in Fab 30 for the 64-bit Hammer family, as first silicon on that chip is "imminent", Sanders said in the call.
AMD has already budgeted $700 million to convert that fab to a 0.13-micron process, the finest process used by Intel Corp. AMD has already began to sample wafers using silicon-on-insulator, a technique designed to lower the capacitance of those processors, allowing them to run at higher clock speeds.
Fab 25 in Austin, the historical home of AMD processors, is being converted into a flash-only facility.
A partnership would be a feather in the cap of UMC, which often is overshadowed somewhat by its larger rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). UMC reported its 2001 annual results on Thursday, recording a loss of 5.6 billion NT on operating revenues of 63.5 billion NT. According to UMC's technology roadmap and statements by the company, the foundry is ramping up its 0.13-micron copper-based process, moving to 0.10-micron in 2003.
According to an agreement struck years ago between AMD and Intel over the rights to the X86 architecture, AMD was originally prohibited from turning to an outside foundry to manufacture chips. When asked about the agreement during the fourth-quarter conference call, Sanders carefully replied,"We see no limitations to our objectives to our relationship contractually with Intel."