A point to remember here, is that AMD was almost certainly considering taking over Gresham. And keep in mind that AMD has a market cap of $3.7 Billion, while Intel has a market cap of $178 Billion. While AMD is one FAB away from having enough capacity to replace Intel in the market.
*rotflmao* You DON'T seriously believe that, do you? This entire post seems to be written from the perspective of a wearer of very rose colored glasses, with very limited knowledge of the ins and outs of the semiconductor business. I'll hit a few high points.
But given the relative prices of the two companies, with Intel being 48 times as expensive as AMD, AMD is doing great, while Intel is sort of muddling along
What color is the sky in your world? Intel remained profitable during one of the worst downturns in the tech industry, and did so without major layoffs, while AMD reverted to losses. I don't see any basis for this statement.
But now, for the first time ever, Intel is facing serious competition in every segment from a company that could, not shall, not will, but may, have the capability to produce 25 million of its 64-bit CPUS per quarter sooner than you think.
So you go from an outright statement above... to a waffle. You can't play both sides of the fence. What is it?
Gresham is still sitting there, almost complete. Dresden was designed to be doubled in size. All the site acquisition, permitting, and infrastructure work is done. Expanding the present shell and putting in more of the same equipment is much less difficult and takes much less time than building a new FAB.
That's not correct. Often times it's more cost effective to start over than to try to modify an existing structure. Intel has had to abandon several older fabs simply because they could not be brought up to current standards. Also, by and large it's very difficult to convert a fab to 300mm unless it was designed for 300mm from the outset. |
