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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials
AMAT 317.97-2.8%3:59 PM EST

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To: Teri Skogerboe who wrote (20721)6/24/1998 5:48:00 PM
From: Clarksterh  Read Replies (3) of 70976
 
OK Teri - Lets go through the math:

1) The Pentium MMX has 4.5M transistors

2) The P-II has 7.5M transistors

3) Last year at this time Intel was 50% 0.25u (and the rest 0.35u)

4) This year Intel is 100% 0.25u

5) Last year 100% of Intel production was Pentium MMX

6) This year 100% of Intel production in P-II

Facts 1 and 2 come from byte.com
Facts 3 thru 6 are approximations, but probably pretty good.

The capacity 'increase' this year due to shrinks alone is:

[(1.0/(0.25)^2)/(0.5/(0.25)^2+0.5/(0.35)^2)]*4.5/7.5=0.8

Surprise, surprise, the shrinks by themselves were not enough to increase capacity when the move to P-II is taken into account. Of course they have obtained capacity from elsewhere (e.g. DEC), but the point is shrinks often aren't enough to increase unit capacity if the number of transistors per unit keeps going up.

Clark

PS I challenge you to find the "engineer or two's inputs last time" where "the answer was.... capacity is increased with shrinks alone." I would have remembered. I suspect it was a misunderstanding.

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