AMD Plans New Plants

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) executives attending the Saratoga Economic Development Corp.'s (SEDC) annual dinner on Friday said the chip maker might open a second or third facility at the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Luther Forest Technology campus, according to the Albany Times-Union.

The article, published Friday, said the news was a "shocker" -- in light of the fact that the non-profit SEDC is developing the Luther Forest campus. A day earlier, AMD had revealed, at its annual meeting at its San Jose, Calif., a "disastrous" fourth quarter in which it lost $611 million.

The AMD executives were at the SEDC meeting to discuss a $3.2 billion, 1.2 million-sq-ft computer chip factory already planned for the site and unveiled renderings of the proposed facility before announcing the possible plans for second and third factories, the article said. A conceptual design of those was part of the presentation but few details were released, it added.

"A design review process that began in February is expected to be completed at the end of this month, and during the second half of the year, AMD management will decide on a probable timeline for the project, which is expected to create 1200 manufacturing jobs and spin off thousands of additional construction and supplier jobs," according to the article.

Groundbreaking would not take place until spring 2008 at the earliest, the Times-Union said. AMD said market conditions and its new "asset light" plan to cut costs by $500 million will largely determine the schedule. New York state cash incentives of $650 million expire in 2009, it said; including tax breaks and infrastructure improvements, the state's package for AMD totals $1.2 billion.

AMD, which has two factories in Dresden, Germany, told the newspaper it will slow its conversion of one of them to more advanced technology as part of its cost-cutting plan, which is speculated by some to include moving toward a fabless model.

IBM, with which AMD collaborates on R&D, announced Thursday a new self-assembly process perfected at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (See Chip Advance Uses Nature's Patterning Process) that creates uniform patterns of trillions of nanoscale holes in a microprocessor to improve performance. New York's package includes $150 million in R&D money for AMD to be used at IBM's East Fishkill, N.Y., facility and at Albany NanoTech, UAlbany's $3.5 billion semiconductor manufacturing research facility.

New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is scheduled to speak, along with CEOs and entrepreneurs, about the state's role in attracting AMD at the seventh annual Summit in Tech Valley, May 14 at the Million Air terminal at Albany International Airport in Colonie, N.Y. The summit is sponsored by the Tech Valley Chamber Coalition (TVCC), a group of 24 chambers of commerce serving 19 counties in New York State, from just south of Montreal to just north of New York City.

AMD CFO Robert J. Rivet will present at the UBS 2007 Leveraged Finance Conference May 9 at 11 a.m. in Las Vegas.

For more information, visit: www.amd.com