Dan, Re: "Almost everything but CPUs and a little flash is made at old FABs using old equipment."
<sigh>
We've already gone over this many times before. How is it that you can continue to ignore this over and over again?
Intel makes many kinds of ICs, and most of them are not CPUs. Most of them also take up much room, even in Intel's newest fabs. The i845 chipset, for example, is made on .18u. Intel sells the majority of their flash at .18u, and some of it at .13u, now. The StrongARM processor is .25u, but the soon to be release XScale will be .18u, and we can assume that they are already running samples through their fabs. I'm not sure about Intel's networking and communications chips, but in order to get fast speeds for gigabit networking or faster, I imagine that they would have to be manufactured at the .18u level. We can't be sure the exact percentage of CPUs with respect to Intel's other ICs, but we can definitely assume that the percentage of these other ICs is *not* trivial. You keep trying to force the conclusion that Intel has to spend an exorbitant amount of money more than AMD for the same amount of resources, yet you refuse to accept any theories that lend themselves to the notion that they do not. Use the simplest explanation, Dan. Intel gets what it pays for - plain and simple.
Re: "What about their being 1.5 years behind on copper, 1.5 years behind on DDR, and 1.5 years behind on SOI?"
- Without copper, Intel managed to have a competitive product at the .18u level. AMD is losing market share, and now that Intel has copper, they will lose more.
- With limited volumes of DDR, supporting it early would have hurt Intel more than it would have helped them. RDRAM established the Pentium 4, giving it the highest performance. DDR followed on, maybe a couple months later than ideal, but certainly not by 18 months. DDR wasn't even available for the Athlon until last March - 10 months ago.
- As for partially depleted SOI, Intel is skipping that technology, since it will be more expensive, and give little in return. PD SOI has just as many problems as it has solutions, but AMD requires it just to remain competitive with Intel. Therefore, they will be spending a lot of money for very little return. Meanwhile, Intel is leading in fully depleted SOI, and will likely beat AMD to market with it. FD SOI gives all the benefits of PD SOI without many of the problems. It will also be a cheaper technology in three more years when Intel is ready to deploy it.
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