Intel's Capital Budget In 2006 Nearly Five Times AMD's

Intel's capital spending this year will again dwarf rival Advanced Micro Devices' outlays. The computer processor market leader will shell out nearly five times as much as AMD as the two companies continue to battle for supremacy in the x86 microprocessor market.

According to research by IC Insights, Intel in 2006 will again allocate more dollars for capital spending than any other semiconductor company in the world, a position it has held for five of the past seven years. Samsung was the largest spender in 2005, but Intel had the largest capital budget from 2000 through 2003, and again in 2006.

AMD, which began shipping its first production microprocessors from its new 300 mm wafer fab in Dresden earlier this month, has the industry's tenth largest capital spending budget, the same position it held in 2005. AMD has seen its share of the x86 microprocessor market grow to more than 20% as of the first quarter of 2006, according to Mercury Research.

Intel has a capital budget of $6.6 billion in 2006, up 13% from the $5.8 billion spent in 2005. AMD has a capital budget of $1.4 billion, the same budget the company had in 2005, IC Insights reports.

Collectively, 16 semiconductor companies will individually allocate $1 billion or more to capital expenditures in 2006, which will account for almost three-fourths of the total industry capital spending in 2006, according to IC Insights.