December 3, 2004 – California-based chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has put its chip assembly plant in Suzhou into trial operation. The plant is going to assemble and test chips starting from next year, which means that Chinese computer makers will be able to use China-made AMD chips in their own products in the future, said the Financial Times.
According to sources, the plant will produce AMD’s 7th generation CPU, and it is expected to make 250,000 chips/week by the end of 2005. After starting full-load operation, the plant’s total production will take 20% to 25% of AMD global plants. For now, AMD’s chip sales from the Chinese market is 15% to 18% of total sales from the global market. Next year, a computer model called PIC with AMD CPU will be released in China.