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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (88588)	9/21/1999 5:07:00 PM
From: Process Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Ten - <Intel's Fab 15 here in Aloha, Oregon, does both flash and logic. Or perhaps I misunderstood you here.> I believe this is a transitory stage. It may be more accurate to say that F15 is transitioning to being a FLASH fab after being a logic fab. Intel specifically developed P856/P802 (.25um FLASH) to be pretty much compatible toolset wise, although the ratio of any given tool to wafer starts may be different, i.e., different capacity considerations vs. certain tool sets. At Intel, it is usually the intention that the production fabs be pretty much dedicated either one way or the other. It'd be a pain in the A** to run a production fab with both; one would invariably end up constraining the capacity of the other. Also, I'd bet the AMD/Fujitsu FASL process is quite different from the AMD/MOT logic process. I count three different companies in the previous sentence. No way they are all "copy exactly." Pb

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (88588)	9/21/1999 5:26:00 PM
From: Process Boy	Respond to of 186894

Ten - More on P856 /P802. This was a first for Intel, to develop flash and logic processes in tandem relative to toolsets. The big foundries may also do it this way, I don't know, but for Intel this was certainly unique. Previously Intel had an arrangement with Sharp, probably not much unlike the AMD/Fujitsu arrangement now. Do you see the advantage here? Intel built in a mechanism to transition its older logic fabs to be flash fabs, should flash demand require it, and probably enabling a way to extend the life of these older logic fabs, and keeping fab folk's jobs a bit more secure. Given the current flash market, one has to be impressed with the foresight to build this infrastructure, considering these decisions were made several years ago. I dunno, I'm impressed. PB