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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD)
AMD 217.91+0.9%Dec 5 9:30 AM EST
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To: Petz who wrote (73637)3/6/2002 1:19:00 PM
From: dale_laroyRead Replies (1) of 275872
 
>Therefore, going from six to nine metallization layers does not increase the number of process steps, or the time to build the chip, by anything close to 50%.<

I believe that the number of mask steps (individual masks not steps to process the all the masks) for the device layer ranges from four to six, depending upon the types and uniformity of the devices. Of course, I read this nearly a decade ago, and things can change a lot in a decade, even assuming what I read was correct.

My guess is that AMD increased their number of mask steps by about 25% in going to 9 layers of metal interconnects.

For the record, the decision to go to a higher number of metal interconnects is often related to shrinking the die area. A reasonable assumption would be that Clawhammer would be at least 50% larger with 6 layers of metal interconnects than with 9 layers of metal interconnects.
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