Calvin,
You say you support CRUS keeping Cirent over MiCRUS. I am curious about your reasons. I don't think MiCRUS was God's gift to CRUS like it was touted a few years ago, but I do think it is better than Cirent.
MiCRUS is currently at 0.35 um and will be migrating down to 0.25 um. Cirent is at 0.35 um and will be migrating to 0.25 um and then to 0.18 um. So that is an advantage for Cirent, but it is the only one I can see. TSMC is not very far behind either of them in process geometries, if at all, anymore. Of course, I don't have much idea of the relative pricing of wafers among the three, which would be key in any decision. MiCRUS has most of the other advantages in process technology. IBM has a mature CMP technology and is ahead of Lucent in developing copper metallization. Overall the engineering quality is much better at MiCRUS than at Cirent.
MiCRUS is underloaded now because many of the graphics chips that were planned for it have evaporated, however, that is going to change as the new generation of Mass Storage and Crystal chips that were designed for MiCRUS ramp up to volume. Those product lines would suffer now, too, if MiCRUS were dumped, and not just the expendable graphics business.
I don't imagine CRUS has a lot of customers that would be demanding product from Cirent yet, since those products would be relatively immature. I could believe that some would request TSMC or the other foundries. A big factor in a customer wanting product from a different fab is that the same design can perform dramatically differently from different fab processes. Some fabs use epi layers and others don't, and there are other differences in processes that can change performance when a product is ported to a different fab. However, if a product is designed initially for MiCRUS, for example, that should not be as big of an issue. Customers may also refuse product from a fab because of perceived quality issues, but I don't see IBM Microelectronics engendering a lot of fear in most customers.
Just curious if you have some other reasons for favoring Cirent or can shed any more light.
G.P.
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