Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced about a year ago that its cost-reduction program intended to turn the company to profitability also includes the reorganization of its manufacturing operations. Although no specific details have been unveiled since then, it seems that the Sunnyvale company is getting close to give us some hints of its intentions.

AMD executives said during the past few days that the "asset-smart" program is already in the implementation stage. According to them, things are going well and the employees, investors and suppliers will be called to discuss the strategy sometime during the next months.

"We see the end point," revealed a spokesman for the microprocessor manufacturer. "We are getting closer." Pressed for additional information, the spokesperson noted, "It's a fair assumption to say we've begun implementing the program".

Hector Ruiz, ex-CEO, said that the company is pleased with the progress and that the details would soon be shared with the press. No other details on the new manufacturing strategy have been disclosed to experts and investors. Most analysts gave up speculating over AMD's asset-smart manufacturing plan and are expecting to receive the "before-the-end-of-the-year" info Ruiz recently promised.

There are other rumors suggesting that AMD plans to spin-off its manufacturing operations as an independent entity. The speculations started from the fact that the chip manufacturer has already been outsourcing a fraction of product fabrication to Chartered Semiconductor. Also, the company works together with IBM for the development of fabrication processes. According to a statement issued by the company on Friday, no operations are planed for spin-off.

"We continue to look at multiple options that leverage our world-class manufacturing capabilities and relationships to achieve an optimum blend of internal and external operations. Our goal is to transform the company and how we manufacture wafers to improve our balance sheet and help deliver sustained profitability," said Drew Prairie, a spokesperson for Advanced Micro Devices.

There are few chances for AMD to plan selling off its fabrics, mainly because of the terms of x86 license agreement it has with Intel. The Sunnyvale company is not allowed to outsource more than 20% of the x86 chips it sells to third party, meaning that it has to produce 80% of its x86 output in-house. The only thing that remains certain is that AMD will change its manufacturing operations to reduce expenses.