14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of last week, Advanced Micro Devices announced the opening of its Dresda facility, called Fab 36.
For AMD, it is the second facility of this kind in Dresda, the first (Fab 30) being one of the main producers of Athlon 64 and Opteron chips.
With the production ramp in Fab 36 progressing on schedule, the company intends to make 90nm production shipments in the first quarter of 2006 and begin 65nm production by the end of 2006. AMD has set a goal to be substantially converted to 65nm in Fab 36 by mid-2007.
AMD plans to add production output on a steady year-to-year basis, giving it the potential to ship as many as 100 million units in 2008, while also keeping fab utilization at consistently high levels. According to the press release, this will help AMD meet growing demand for its award-winning AMD64 processors and achieve its objectives of capturing a significantly larger share of the x86 microprocessor market in the coming years.
This is not the only good news from AMD, the latest results showing that Intel's market share is now under 50%. The data is valid for September, when AMD's market share reached 52% and Intel recorded a market share of 46%. Intel is still the leader on the market of notebook and server processors, but AMD's Turion 64 and Opteron are catching up.