Re: Between building new FABs, moving to smaller parts on .13, and moving to 300mm wafers, they've quadrupled their capacity and doubled their capital costs, to compensate for a shortfall of about 15% that occurred because of a once per thousand years event
The thought that they might know something that you don't never crosses your mind, does it?
Like what, P4 design failures mean that Intel yields will be terrible from now on?
Intel has pulled out of a number of markets recently (that they probably shouldn't have been in, in the first place) like children's toys and cameras. The PC business doesn't look set to surpass its Y2K peak for a long time.
Moving to .13 and 300mm wafers basis doesn't reduce the cost of each FAB, it increases that cost, savings are supposed to come from a greater volume of production per FAB - each new 300mm .13 FABs costs more than the old 200mm FABs did, but is supposed to produce a far greater number of chips. The theory was that fewer would be required resulting in a total cost savings.
The theory is working out perfectly for AMD, from .13 alone, but this clearly is not the case at Intel. |
