Taipei, June 17, 2010 (CENS)-- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is likely to farm out production of its Ontario microprocessors to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) sometime in the first quarter next year, marking AMD`s first CPU contract to world`s No.1 foundry, according to suppliers of chip-making equipment.

Ontario is among the AMD Fusion family of microprocessor solutions incorporating central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) designed on 40-nanometer Bulk CMOS rule. The family is developed to compete against Intel Westmere and Sandy Bridge platforms.

According to the equipment suppliers, although AMD-owned foundry, Globalfoundries, also supplies 40nm Bulk CMOS process, its capacity has been very limited since its merger with Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in 2008, pushing it to secure the capacity with TSMC.

VIA Technologies is another microprocessor supplier to contract TSMC to make its 40nm dual core processor, codenamed Nano, in the first quarter of 2011. VIA has stopped depending on TSMC for contract manufacturing of its CPUs since 2004, when IBM and Fujitsu began to make the chips for it. Last year, VIA decided to re-contract TSMC to make its CPUs in light of collaboration between Fujitsu and TSMC on sub 40nm processes.

Equipment suppliers pointed out that TSMC will invest lavishly in new equipment not only in preparation for swirling demands from graphics vendors but also for demands from AMD and VIA. TSMC plans to spend record US$4.8 billion on new equipment by the end of this year.

(by Ken Liu)