AMD grants win EU approval
Published: 06 Feb 2004 16:30 GMT
The European Union has approved grants by the German and Saxon governments for Advanced Micro Devices' second chipmaking facility in Dresden.
The grants, worth 545m euros, are the highest benefit permissible under the grants and subsidy schemes of the EU, AMD said. The company broke ground for its new facility, adjacent to its existing plant in Dresden in the German state of Saxony, in November of last year.
The amount offered by the German government was one of the factors that made the chipmaker decide on the location of the facility. The company has said it expects to spend $2.4bn over the next four years to construct and later upgrade the plant. It expects to begin volume production of chips in 2006.
The new facility will use 300-millimetre wafers -- the disks that chips are produced on -- which help increase unit volume and cut costs. The plant will eventually turn out chips at the 65-nanometre level, AMD has said. The nanometre measurement, one billionth of a metre, refers to the size of the tiny features inside each chip. AMD is currently producing 130-nanometre chips and hopes to move to 90 nanometres this year, roughly the same time as other chip leaders.
"With this approval, our new project has passed a key financial milestone as we begin the process of building, equipping and ramping the new fab," Bob Rivet, chief financial officer of AMD, said in a statement.
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