Our knowledgeable industry friends independently came to the same conclusion, that AMD’s asset light strategy is likely to include selling the FAB(s).

We still haven’t confirmed that this will happen, but this is the easiest way for AMD to break even in Q3 2008, as it originally planned.

It becomes clear that AMD might have a chance to catch up with Intel in 2009, but Intel has never had a stronger roadmap, although we’ve seen that Intel had huge issues transitioning to 45nm and it still has shortages of many mainstream quad-cores.

AMD currently has two FABs, one fully operational called FAB36 and one that is supposed to start manufacturing 45nm CPUs scheduled to start this summer, FAB38.

FABs tend to be very expensive, at least two billion USD for a single FAB; but without a FAB you have to pay a fee for each processor which definitely has to cost more than to simply make the FAB and make the chips for yourself. 

We still don't know if this will happen, but it has become highly likely a possibility.