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I thought I read somewhere that TSMC was gearing up to do 32nm fabrication on contract for other companies. Here's a reference to assure me I have some sliver of sanity left. 45nm by September, and 32nm by Q4 of '09. So it seems that at least one company might be an option for outsourcing some fabrication.

Chartered Semi just signed another tech partnership with IBM, Samsung, Infineon, and Freescale. This one goes down to 32nm.

UMC and TI are working on 32nm together, too.

Fujitsu, although not especially known for fabbing chips for third parties, is working on getting down to 32nm as well. They do some fabbing for others now.

In any case, this story at Fabtech gives a much more reasoned and insightful look at the issues. They says it's likely AMD will outsource lower-end CPUs and continue to outsourc emuch of the GPU business as ATI already did. They may ramp up more outsourced work to Chartered than they currently do, and may share some fab space at Dresden and in New York. That's a far cry from going fully fabless.

Intel has been trying to diversify over the past two decades. Some of their attempts have been fruitful (their move into NOR flash in the late 80s, the move into networking products), whereas others have been mistakes (StrongARM / XScale, LCoS).

A quick note: Intel is not new to flash memory production. Intel pioneered flash memory production back in the 1980s, and it has been hugely profitable. The new thing here is NAND flash production.

Both AMD (now Spansion) and Intel jumped on the NOR flash train because, back in the 80s and 90s the run-in-place simplicity made NOR flash a big seller. Now that consumer products demand higher capacity, and the performance issues of NAND have largely been solved (or hidden), NOR flash sales are declining while NAND sales are skyrocketing. Even cell phones have started using NAND memory, which is really hurting NOR flash sales.

Spansion saw this trend, and attempted to bridge the gap by attaching a NAND chip to a NOR interface (ORNAND), giving cellphone makers the best of both worlds. But so far, the results have been unimpressive (1 Gbit chip capacities). In light of the obvious industry transition, Intel feels they need to move to NAND in in order to remain competitive. Instead of taking the risk of reinventing the wheel like Spansion, Intel has chosen to follow the rest of the industry.

This article offers some hints:

http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/2079

While most of your post is right on, the last sentence is inaccurate. 75nm and 65nm fabs are already in operation. I know; I design for one :)

AMD is converting Fab 30 in Dresden from 90um and 200mm wafers to Fab 38, with 65nm and 300mm wafers. This should come on line in 2007. Longer term, AMD is building a new fab in upstate New York for 32nm features on 300mm wafers. That should come on line in 2010.

Meanwhile, AMD's main fab, Fab 36 in Dresden, is starting to produce 65nm features on 200mm wafers. AMD is also outsourcing some production to a 65nm fab in Singapore.

Down at the user level, this means that first shipments of AMD CPUs made with 65nm technology should appear in December of 2006. Coming soon to Dell Dimension desktops.

Something pretty good! Do you guys keep getting the same Core Duo adds I get whenever I go to /.? They're working... I really want one.

I'm waiting to see AMD's 65nm product. Until then, I'm sitting on the side-lines. That's probably why AMD is keeping their progress hush-hush. Just in case you missed it before, here's some good rumors about AMD coming out this month with 65nm products:

http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/1757/2/

AMD is apparently already making 65nm parts for Dell, supposedly available next month! See:

http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/1757/2/

From the article at Semiconductor Fabtech:

Chartered Semiconductor has warned that due to weaker than expected demand for end product devices in the second quarter, its customers are being cautious on committing to any increases in production runs. The foundry now expects business to be flat for the third quarter. [snip] More worryingly, Thomas noted that the foundry was seeing particular weakness in the consumer video gaming market, referring it is assumed to the demand for Microsoft's Xbox 360 microprocessors.

From the article at Semiconductor Fabtech:

Chartered Semiconductor has warned that due to weaker than expected demand for end product devices in the second quarter, its customers are being cautious on committing to any increases in production runs. The foundry now expects business to be flat for the third quarter. [snip] More worryingly, Thomas noted that the foundry was seeing particular weakness in the consumer video gaming market, referring it is assumed to the demand for Microsoft's Xbox 360 microprocessors.