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

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (77989)	10/31/1999 1:42:00 AM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 1576178

Re: I bet Intel management is drooling at the cost savings... Maybe they're just drooling :-) Infineon seems reasonably happy with their 300mm FAB, but there is another side to the story: ================================================= Yoon Woo Lee, president of Samsung Electronics, said that current step-and-scan technology has not increased its processing speed, and the time required for today's tools to process a single 300-mm wafer is long. "The throughput for 300-mm wafers is just 40 percent of what we are seeing in 200-mm wafers," he said. "So even though you can get much more bits on the bigger wafer, there is no real output benefit." Complicating the equation even further, Lee noted that the 300-mm tools are more expensive than the equipment for 8-inch wafers, and materials costs are higher. The larger-diameter silicon disks are at least three times the price and demand more gases and other chemicals to process. "There are still many challenges before 300 mm becomes a reality in mass production," he said. ======================================================= The rest is at: news.semiconductoronline.com{9C2CFF1E-8249-11D3-9A67-00A0C9C83AFB} I think AMD will be just fine with 8 inch wafers for the next couple of years. Cheers, Dan

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (77989)	10/31/1999 12:47:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576178

Cringe - Re: "But do you think a current Fab can be outfitted to handle the larger wafers?" Practically, no. First, ALL 8 inch (or smaller) equipment won't work - so essentially the entire production equipment must be removed and new 300 MM equipment must be installed. That means shutting down operations - for an extended period of time - maybe 3 to 6 months. In a wafer shortage environment, who wants to LOSE wafer production ? The floor space/foot print of the new 300 MM equipment will be much larger than 200 MM equipment, so the number of pieces of equipment that will fit into an existing fab will be decreased - so the net WAFER STARTS/Week and THROUGHPUT will be significantly reduced. And that would EAT UP the benefits of going to the larger wafers in the first place. Paul

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (77989)	10/31/1999 3:38:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 1576178

Cringe - Re: ""Just having an AthLON CPU is nowhere near enough to insure their future success." Which may be why they are going for the long ball with X86-64." Chicks may dig the long ball - Wall Street seems to prefer DELIVERING PROFITS. Re: ""I believe Jerry said Dresden wouldn't impact AMD's bottom line until H2/2000 - making that Q3/2000 at the earliest. And that is 9 to 10 months away !" I didn't hear Q3's CC, so I don't know if he said that." I posted a verbatim transcript of what he said - several times - about a week ago. You can "look it up". Paul