Until now, AMD has been mostly predicting when it would do wafer starts. They have consistently used the words, "Production Wafer Starts." Unlike Dan, I don't recall "revenue shipments" being used, but AMD has instead been telling the analysts when production would start.
I did look at the transcript of a November analysts meeting and AMD fumbled for words when talking about the 90 nm ramp. They said "product will be in the hands of our customers in the summer of 2004." That's pretty long-winded, imprecise and open to misinterpretation compared to "revenue shipments in Q3." At least we know its not 5 customers holding a few sample chips.
All the way back on September 3, AMD said that 90 nm shipments would not occur until the "summer" of 2004, saying this was 10 weeks after what they had originally hoped for -- the beginning of shipments at the end of Q2, or June. June+10 weeks=August, possibly even September.
Based on the wafer start date, it appears to me that AMD is 2 to 3 weeks ahead of that schedule revealed on September 3.
"Production Wafer Starts" result in "Shipment for Revenue" 3 months later.
All the words "production" and "revenue" imply, is that the ultimate product is intended for sale, rather than sampling and iterating. Those chips don't get sold.
So how much volume does this represent? My guess is that the initial production volume would be between 5 and 10% of the fab, 300-600 WPW, with (initially) 100 GDPW, so a rate of 30K to 60K per week. Total Q3 90nm sales could be anywhere between 100K and 500K, depending on when production output starts and whether AMD starts ramping up the wafer starts before the end of June. That's also consistent with the Athlon 64 ramp, where ~40-50K were sold in two weeks; that was a much larger die.
As for Intel redefining the English language, thats a relatively recent phenomenon.
PS - this was intended for Pravin, but he's caught enough flak already anyway. I do think AMD should know within a couple weeks how the ramp is going, and I expect some more light to be shed in June.
Petz |
