In reality, there are already plenty of third-party fabs out there. For instance, TSMC. And they have a 65nm process and that's what ATI's new 2000 HD series is manufactured on. So AMD (which includes ATI) is already manufacturing a lot of chips through a third-party. Even more than that, the current lowest end AMD processors, the Geode family, which is being used for the OLPC is also already manufactured by a third-party.

The only contention in this story is that AMD will be moving more low-end manufacturing to third-parties. The highest-end CPU's really have to be manufactured by the company itself. Not only does AMD have to stay as close to the bleeding edge as possible but they also have to have control enough to add certain devices or change certain design constraints. The change in volume to a TSMC or other third-party manufacturer from moving over some of AMD's manufacuting would not affect their bottom line or cost very much at all.

In addition, there are plenty of companies making various chips for all kinds of purposes. The limiting factor for new entries into the general purpose processor business is not the fab technology . A company can find the few million to make the masks and start making runs but the number of engineers they would need to compete with a design from Intel or AMD is enormous and would take years. In addition, Via could make a chip at 65nm right now if they wanted to but they don't have the partners or the platforms or market for those chips so they're not going to do it.

So while I'm looking forward to the day when there can be lots of players in the high-performance CPU business, the day is not here yet and this rumor, even if it were true, would do almost nothing to bring it closer.