The Foundry company (no, we are not AMD, we are other company that is in AMD's financial reports for a while, but not AMD) is making some plans for the distant future. The future starts with 45nm on Silicon on Insulator and production of Shanghai and Deneb quad-core CPUs for AMD in Q4 2008. In 2009, tThe Foundry boys have to start thinking about another transition to a smaller 32nm process, as this is exactly what Intel is doing now.  

Intel is clearly the leader in shifting from one process to another, and it takes 10+ billion dollars for Intel to do that every second year.  Intel currently has multiple fabs that can produce CPUs in both 65nm and 45nm, while The Foundry company (AMD spin off) has one 65nm in Dresden with second soon to start in 45nm. It takes roughly two years for Intel to change the process and we are sure AMD doesn’t need less.

If you have this time frame in mind, AMD shouldn't be ready for 32nm production by late 2010, but we are sure that AMD will have to push the time and try to bring 32nm production before this distant date. Intel should have 32nm processors either in late 2009 or in early 2010 and smaller transistor means more of them at the same wafer and usually means higher clock at the same or lower dissipation.

Having a 45nm Silicon on insulator is just a start of long recovery for AMD but this won’t be enough for a big bang. From this perspective it looks like AMD will be at least a few quarters behind Intel in 32nm manufacturing.