AMD Plans to Manufacture Hybrid Processors at Its Own Fabs. ::::

Advanced Micro Devices plans to make the first hybrid processors – which combine general-purpose x86 processing cores with a graphics processing core – at its own fabs, a high-ranking executive said on Tuesday. Even though some lower-end models might be outsourced to a third party, they will still be made using silicon-on-insulator process technology.

“The first Fusion processors will be made at AMD’s chip plant in Dresden, Germany. There are some lower-end models that we’re considering that we might use the fabless model for,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s graphics products group, reports IDG news service..
Earlier AMD implied that the first hybrid processors which belong to Fusion project may be multi-chip-modules (MCMs), which would mean that central processing unit core is produced in-house whereas the graphics core is out sourced to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. or United Microelectronics Corp. However, in case of monolithic single-chip Fusion processor, the chip should be produced at AMD or its outsourcing partner Chartered Semiconductor since neither TSMC nor UMC utilize silicon-on-insulator process technology. Mr. Bergman stressed that Fusion chips would be made using SOI manufacturing tech.
According to latest public promices by AMD, the first hybrid processors code-named Swift will be dual-core chips with built-in graphics core that are set to become available in the second half of 2009. The x86 processing engines of Swift will share micro-architecture with AMD Phenom processors, whereas graphics core is projected to be a derivative from ATI R700-series graphics processing unit.