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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: Robert Walter who wrote (3236)	11/25/1996 1:40:00 AM
From: Maxwell	of 1579816

You don't have to have a EE degree to understand semiconductor process. As a matter of fact, most EE don't understand IC fabrication at all. EE are trained to analyze circuits. If you want expert opinions ask the integration/process engineers that work in a fab. I don't think Mr. Paul E. is a qualified candidate. He has been away from Intel for too long. These days, too long means longer than 1 year. The technology is changing so rapid that you have to be working in that field to keep up. What Mr. P.E. knows is OBSOLETE! As for others who said about K6 8.8M transistors "kludge" are idiots that know nothing of EE subjects. Back to AMD, the most difficult issue in making an Intel compatible processor is in the design phase. If you can design a CPU that runs Windows softwares and all other softwares "BUG Free" you are 80% home free. The next difficult problem is the speed of the chip. The speed is depended on how well you design your layout. If you design well enough you can make a chip run exceeds 500MHz. Just look at the DEC's Alpha chip. Remember the theoretical switching speed of a silicon is about 10GHz. What limits the current speed today chips are due to resonances and cross talks among the interconnects. So the speed issue accounts for the other 15%. The last 5% accounts for the manufacturing capability and capacity. Most advanced IC fab these days have these 2 elements. For AMD, it is a "no brainer". Their strength is in manufacturing in high volume. After all they have fabricated millions of 386, 486, and K5. Why would anyone doubt AMD's capability of producing K6? If they can get the chip working "BUG Free" they can cruise home easily. About the K6 8.8M transistors. With the die size people claimed, this is very doable on .35 micron and 5 Metal technology. Efficiency in design compacitifies the chip. Remeber the transistor density on K6 is nowhere as dense as 16M & 64M DRAMs. The only thing you have to worry is the interconnects in the microprocessor. This issue has been addressed in Nexgen 586 using IBM process technology. Thus, I don't see the manufacturability problem of the K6. So don't listen to the idiots that make claims without any knowledge of the semiconductor technology. The more they talk the more stupidity they reveals.

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