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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenith Lee who wrote (71092)	9/5/1999 1:14:00 AM
From: Process Boy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575544

Kenith - <You are the only one here that gets most of the process-related issues correct.> Thank you for that compliment. Very very gratifying. <Interesting... Looks like you are near completion of 0.18 and will be wrapping up soon. You seem to be more in the advance development than a sustaining engineer (process boy).> Actually, my gig is process development. Intel's methodology is to have a team develop the process from the ground up, and actually carry it through a significant part of the production ramp. The portion of the ramp that the development team owns has been getting bigger with every process generation. The transfer to production point is arbitrarily determined by x wafer starts per week. That x factor would be considered volume production by anyone in the industry. Also, Production sustaining types come in at various stages in all aspects, in an effort to make the ramp and process transfer "seamless". This is specific to the fab we currently reside in, but also, of course, the development team is responsible for transfering the process to other fabs in a Copy Exactly fashion in the same time period. I.e., if one of the transfer fabs happens to experience difficulties during the time the development team owns the ramp, the development teams owns driving the solution. <You may be correct about the potential of Coppermine. Even if it comes short of the K7, it will still be very successful. Just like Microsoft, it does not have to be the best to win. We will see in a few months.> I have recently said that I don't believe it is realistic of Coppermine to win every benchmark at this point clock for clock. I don't know for sure on this one (I have not seen any direct performance comparisons of Cumine vs. Athlon at this point, presumably just like you :-)), and this is my own opinion. Do I consider this the end of the world? No. Since I have first came on the thread, I have endeavored to convey that I believe this business has many many aspects. Design is very important, but it isn't everything. I could go on and on about my thoughts on this, but if you take my previous posts in aggregate, you would get the idea where I'm coming from. I can say one thing on this subject: I am extremely happy with how P858 as a process turned out. An excellent blend of cost, performance, and manufacturability. My hope, given my biases, is that this translates into success for my employer relative to the bottom line, and my employer can leverage the success I perceive we have achieved to maximum advantage competitively. PB