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

To: Process Boy who wrote (88941)	1/22/2000 12:46:00 PM
From: milo_morai	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572365

My point is still the same. INTC will not be using copper for a year, therefore AMD has 12months more experience using COPPER, it doesn't matter to me if it's 180nM or 130nM. It makes more sense to get up to speed on a new technology, before leaping to 130nM and copper at the same time. IMO It is always better to make one change at a time, as it's is easier to troubleshoot issues, than to change multiple things, as it tends to confuse problems that arise, as you are not sure if the change to copper or the change to 130nM was a issue. Milo

To: Process Boy who wrote (88941)	1/22/2000 12:55:00 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572365

Re: As far as Intel is concerned, it would not have been to its advantage to do so [copper]... That makes sense, I remember an eetimes article from about 6 months ago that said "some companies" had trouble with their prototype copper processes filling to the bottom of the etches - might that have been Intel's deep trench process? But that same process, while not being suitable for copper, may give some of the benefits of copper by getting equivalent current carrying capacity at small feature sizes due the deeper cross section of the feature. So Copper might be a big benefit to AMD at .18, but less of a benefit to Intel at the same feature size (that's just ignorant pure speculation on my part - if it's nonsense, please post that fact so that no one is misled) Re: Intel will have a .13 Cu process in production before AMD will... HUH? Dan

To: Process Boy who wrote (88941)	1/23/2000 12:03:00 AM
From: Charles R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572365

PB, <, and the sizeable cost advantage on .18 over Copper due to immature Cu equipment status.> Would your view change if AMD's Cu yields better than Jerry claimed (even Rob Herb repeated that assertion in the Radio Wall Street interview)? Chuck

To: Process Boy who wrote (88941)	1/23/2000 9:50:00 AM
From: Shane Geary	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572365

PB: "and the sizeable cost advantage on .18 over Copper due to immature Cu equipment status." Why do you say Intel gets a 'sizeable' cost advantage due to immature Cu equipment status? So the cost advantage is due to the performance of the Cu tools, not the cost of them or of the Cu process per se? Interesting. Personally, I can see that Intel will gain a cost advantage relative to their OWN costs of introducing a Cu process - because of the amount of equipment re-use possible. It may then make a lot of financial sense for Intel to remain with Al in their current fabs for the 0.18um process. Intel have trumpeted the amount of equipment re-use they have as a significant contributor to cost reduction, AMD did the same in fab25 for the 0.18um process, remember. However, when kitting out a NEW fab, the financial implications must be very different. You don't want to introduce equipment that you will then have to get rid of one process generation (2 years) later. It is possible that AMDs Cu tools will be utilised in subsequent generations. Also, in theory at least, a dual damascene copper process has fewer steps the traditional Al + W dep/etch backend processes, ultimately allowing better defect density (reported by IBM) and lower wafer costs. I agree with you that much greater MHz benefit from Cu will be seen at 0.13um and below. But lets not go through this again!! Regards, Shane