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

To: ajbrenner who wrote (76160)	10/19/1999 9:31:00 PM
From: Goutam	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571567

ajb, Finally, Dedication of Dresden Fab News from a local source: AMD eyes 1,000MHz chips with new fab zdnet.com ______ The battle against Intel escalates Wednesday when AMD dedicates Fab 30: The birth place of powerful new processors to take on Pentium and beyond. By John G. Spooner, ZDNN, October 19, 1999 3:13 PM PT Advanced Micro Devices is expected to escalate its battle with Intel Wednesday with the dedication of a fabrication plant capable of producing 1,000MHz processors. The plant, called Fab 30, is key to AMD's (NYSE:AMD) plan to keep ahead of Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC), because its state-of-the-art facilities will allow for the manufacture of Athlon processors at higher clock speeds than are currently possible. The company will dedicate the fab, located in Dresden, Germany, Wednesday morning. The first samples of Athlons running at approximately 900MHz are expected later this quarter. The fab is expected to begin shipping finalproduction-level chips in the second quarter of next year and will hit volume production by the second half. In a dedication ceremony, AMD CEO W. J. Sanders is expected to tell attendees that the fab will be producing 1GHz, or 1,000MHz, Athlon chips next year. AMD's Athlon roadmap shows those chips coming in the second half. He is also expected to announce that pre-productionchip samples using manufacturing technologies presentin the fab have been produced at 900MHz and faster speeds. Smaller process, faster results The fab will produce chips that use AMD's new 0.18-micron manufacturing process along with copper interconnects. The 0.18-micron process reduces the space between transistors inside the chip from 0.25 micron. A micron is a millionth of a meter. This helps increase clock speed, while lowering power consumption and the amount of heat produced by the chip. Copper interconnects, used in place of aluminum metal to bridge the gap between transistors, offer additional performance boosts. According to analysts switching from aluminum to copper and changing nothing else would yield a performance increase of about 10 percent. The technology to do both comes courtesy of a licensing agreement with Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT). The companies plan to collaborate to develop new chip technologies featuring copper. Fab 30, named for the number of years since AMD was founded, cost about $1.9 billion and has been in construction since October 1996. It will manufacture Athlon chips and has also produced samples of AMD's K6-family processors. Fab 30 will also house AMD's Dresden Design Center, an engineering operation that will create future AMD processors and develop supporting technologies for current processors. Intel eyes same prize While AMD plans to hit the 1GHz mark with Athlon, Intel is eyeing the same milestone with a new processor architecture. Code-named Willamette, Intel's first 1GHz desktop chip is expected in late 2000 or early 2001. It will use a design different than that used by current Pentium III chips, according to the company. Sources say tha Willamette's new architecture is based on the processor core of Intel's forthcoming Itanium chip and that it will use a 423 pin socket, whose design is similar to that of the 370 pin Socket 370 now in use. Intel is also planning to introduce a truckload of new Pentium III chips next Monday, including desktop Pentium III chips running at clock speeds of up to 733MHz, manufactured on a 0.18-micron process. AMD's current top Athlon chip runs at 700MHz on a 0.25-micron process with aluminum interconnects. It is mated with a 200MHz system bus. AMD is also planning to up its bus speed to 266MHz for high-end applications next year, coupling the faster bus with double data rate dynamic RAM, also running at 266MHz. AMD eyes 1,000MHz chips with new fab zdnet.com ______ Goutama