MALTA — Advanced Micro Devices’ plans to spin off its manufacturing operations aren’t threatened by an existing technology-sharing agreement with its rival, Intel Corp., representatives of both companies said Friday.

“We have very smart lawyers who have looked at it from every angle and say it’s a non-issue,” Ward Tisdale, AMD’s director of global corporate affairs, said at a Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce event.

An Intel spokesman also said that company doesn’t want to challenge the deal, though it has “serious questions” about what it means for sharing its intellectual property.

“We have no intention whatsoever of getting in the way,” Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.

AMD announced Tuesday that a new corporate entity, The Foundry Co., will take over its two manufacturing plants in Dresden, Germany, as well as plans for a $4.5 billion factory to be built starting next year at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta.

The Foundry Co., while staffed by current AMD employees, will be a new corporation shared between AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Corp. of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.

The Advanced Technology Investment Corp. will put up $2.1 billion immediately and up to $6 billion more in coming years toward the Luther Forest plant and upgrades to the German chip plants.

The new corporation’s board of directors will be evenly split between AMD and ATIC, with former AMD chief Hector Ruiz as chairman, and Douglas Grose, currently AMD’s senior vice president for manufacturing, as the CEO.

About 3,000 employees will move from AMD to the Foundry Co., not counting the 1,400 jobs to be created in the future at Luther Forest.

Tisdale explained the arrangement Friday during a “Welcome AMD” presentation before nearly 400 members of the Chamber of Commerce at the Holiday Inn.

He said semiconductor companies contracting with other companies for their manufacturing is a trend in the computer industry because making computer chips is so capital-intensive. Manufacturing costs are partially responsible for the billions of dollars AMD has lost in the last two years.

The Foundry Co. will be assuming $1.2 billion of that debt, while Abu Dhabi investors will pay AMD $700 million and increase their ownership stake in AMD from 8 percent to 19 percent.

“Customers will get a more safe, stable and competitive AMD,” Tisdale said.

AMD will initially be the primary customer of The Foundry Co., but the company could also sell computer chips to others in the future.

Intel and AMD, despite a recent history of arch-competition and litigation, have a technology-sharing agreement that dates from 1976. Under the confidential agreement, AMD pays chip-design royalties to Intel, and it forbids transfer of the technology to a third party. The current agreement expires at the end of 2009.

“Our concern is we don’t know enough about the ownership stakes of the new company, the structure of the company, and how that interplays with our intellectual property rights,” Mulloy said. “We have no interest in stopping this transaction, but we have some serious questions.”

He said Intel is waiting for a proxy statement to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said it would be speculative to talk about what recourse, if any, Intel would have if it felt the agreement had been violated.