Barry - Re:"..AMD plant being planned to be built shortly in East Germany with significant German government money..."
This story is correct, as far as it goes. AMD announced the plans for this plant in Dresden, (formerly East Germany) in late 1995 or early 1996. They started "groundbreaking" late last year. They (AMD) are getting significant financing from the German Government - they need jobs over there!
In actuality, the "groundbreaking" wasn't really the start of construction. I believe there was a ceremony and that the construction site was cleared of rubble (?). Actual construction will start this spring (1997) in Dresden.
I believe completion is not scheduled until late 1998, so actual wafers won't be rolling off the line until early 1999.
This leaves AMD with only one Fab (#25, Austin) capable of producing production volumes for their K5/K6 processors. This Fab was originally specified as having a capacity for about 6100 8 inch wafers per week when making a 0.5/0.35 micron process with three layers of metal.
However, AMD had to add two more layers of metal plus a local interconnect (at the gate level for source/drain connections), and these three layers add probably 6 thin film deposition steps, several CMP operations, and possibly 5 or 6 additional masking operations. This requires added equipment and longer throughput times so I believe the 6100 wafers/week won't apply to the K6 process.
Let me add that the K6 process, with all these steps, yields a die with 8.8 million transistors in a die size of 166 sq. mm., a spectacular achievement. If AMD can get this into high volume with "acceptable" yields, they will have a good shot at recouping lost market share in the CPU business (barring design problems).
They have an R & D facility in Sunnyvale, and I imagine small volumes can be produced here - obvioulsy at the expense of R & D.
AMD also has joint developments in Japan with Fujitsu to make flash memory products - NOT microprocessors. They have one fab up and running and another one on the drawing boards or being built - I'm not quite sure at this time.
Aufwiedersehen
Paul |
