Petz - < But if even one fab, let alone four, were 100% on 0.18 process, it would be more than 10% of wafers.>
Petz,
* - When new fabs start production, they never do it at full capacity. The logistics of doing this for "Mega" fabs are prohibitive. It generally takes a matter of something ~ several months or a year or so once production gets going to ramp to full capacity. Two of the fabs are in this category.
* - Two of the fabs are considered "mixed use" development fabs, i.e., they are developing and running other processes and products at the same time they are ramping .18. Neither of these fabs were .25 production Logic fabs, BTW.
* - One of the fabs is running some .25 production while ramping .18. However, this transition its .25 allocation was transistioned to another facility a long before the .18 ramp. I am familiar with this particular transistion, and I am convinced that the .18 ramp in this fab shouldn't have produced a .25 shortfall of any meaningful consequence, except possibly to the second order.
I've been about as detailed I can be. If you ask me for more specifics, I won't answer.
One thing that has impacted the ramp more than anything, is the original 1-2 month (depending on how you look at it) delay announced
in Sept.
As far as my take on the .25 shortages, my belief is that capacity is just what INTC mgmgt. inferred at the beginning of the quarter; it's maxed out. smoothly transitioning to .18 is now imperative, as its smaller die sizes will help in this regard going forward.
I going to chime the "demand is exceeding supply" thing again.
PB |
