14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices' chief executive officer announced that the firm had plans to use the manufacturing capacities of The Foundry Company to produce some of ATI’s graphics processing units (GPUs). The Foundry Company is a joint venture founded by AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Company for chip manufacturing. The Sunnyvale firm also announced that the manufacturing facilities of the joint venture would be able to produce GPUs using only the 32-nanometer fabrication technology.
“We will be ramping Fab 38 and we will be installing into Fab 38 a 32nm bulk process for the purpose of enabling the foundry business. We will also be moving some GPU product into the Foundry Company in order to help the Foundry Company get off the ground relative to that foundry type business. Clearly, as a result of having two really good suppliers on the GPU side we got an opportunity to improve our costs there and capability,” said Dirk Meyer, chief executive and officer of AMD, during a conference call.
AMD previously stated that the Foundry Co. would also be used to manufacture GPUs for ATI, the graphics products group of AMD, yet the company gives more details for the first time. Since the manufacturing facilities will only be able to make GPUs using the 32nm fabrication process, the first such graphics processors will not be available sooner than 2010.
AMD's graphics division ATI contributed a lot to the earnings the company registered during the third quarter. Q3 was the first quarter during which ATI marked profit since it was purchased by AMD. According to analysts, this is due to the launch of the Radeon 4000-series of graphics cards, which brought the maker back to a leading position on the high-end segment of the market. ATI has already announced the launch of new products for the fourth quarter of the year; a fresh series of GPUs under the 40nm process technology is also expected to be released in mid-2009.