From Register,
AMD succeeds in producing copper K6
The director of AMD's Fab 30 in Dresden said today that earlier this month the
company had succeeded in producing a K6 using its copper technology.
But said Hans Jeppe, who runs the facility, success with the K6 in copper is merely a
warm up for production of the K7 Athlon.
Jeppe confirmed that the fab was capable of producing 5,500 wafer starts a week
although he declined to say how many of the dies would be good ones. There will be
300 K7 Athlons per wafer at .18 micron.
However, on a tour of the facility, AMD and Jeppe were keen to stress that the fab has
put in place a contamination management unit which would help isolate defects from
the factory.
The Register was shown several examples of eight inch wafers, using the copper
technology, which AMD has already produced at Fab 30.
And, explained Jeppe, AMD is on target to move to .18 copper technology by year
end.
He said that copper technology was inherently less expensive than using aluminium
interconnects.
On the K6, he said: "We'll probably deliver some K6s out of this technology but this is
not our target, it is our warmup technology."
He said: "Our target was to use this as a transition technology and it has been
successfully completed on the 7 July. .18 micron [copper] is on target for the end of
this year."
AMD and its partner Motorola are already working on .13 micron versions of the
technology, said Jeppe.
We will provide a full report on our tour of Dresden tomorrow, on our return to London.
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