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

To: xun who wrote (93548)	2/16/2000 11:04:00 AM
From: niceguy767	Respond to of 1571808

panic mob: I agree...No more negatives in AMD's way...The PWeeIII high-end problems are now exposed for all to see! AMD might just move the sweet spot to 700 to 800 MHZ by introducing for the "here and now" retail market the 900MHz. With a sweet spot between 700 and 800, it looks like AMD could sell as many "spry Athys" as they can produce. AMD's biggest problem in Y2000 may be managing this sweet spot so that demand for the "spry Athy" doesn't exceed supply... The next upleg can begin anytime now...A new 52 week closing high this week would probably signal the beginning of the next upleg...

To: xun who wrote (93548)	2/16/2000 11:20:00 AM
From: xun	Respond to of 1571808

Copper Interconnection From EB eb-mag.com PROCESS TECHNOLOGY Copper Interconnection The semiconductor industry has accepted the need to switch from aluminum to copper interconnects in chip manufacturing. But it's a bumpy road to the promised land. By Gina Fraone Talk to any Semiconductor Industry executive or expert and they'll tell you the same thing. The switch from aluminum to copper interconnects will happen. It has to. Or the chip industry will not continue to produce the performance gains it has achieved over the past 30 years. But getting the industry to agree to switch to copper interconnects is only half the battle. Now it's up to equipment suppliers to convince chip manufacturers and wafer foundries that the equipment is ready, says Paul Winebarger, director of the interconnect division at Sematech, a non-profit technology development consortium of U.S. semiconductor manufacturers in Austin, TX. ...... Many major chip suppliers have decided to address the issue of interconnect materials first. But microprocessor titan Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA, has decided to delay switching interconnects material until the industry has moved down to .13 micron feature sizes, while it forges ahead with a 300-mm program With its enormous installed base of capital equipment designed for aluminum processing, Intel will want to hold off a full transition to copper as long as it possibly can, say Sematech's Winebarger. As a result, Intel has designed ways to achieve steady performance gains without switching to copper interconnects by using new designs and packaging solutions, says Dataquest's Dornseif. Forecasts for sales of deposition and related copper tools are still strong, says VLSI's Puhaka. Integrated circuit manufacturers will be buying these tools, he says. But most copper chip production announcements from IC manufacturers are still a PR game, he says. "Only IBM has really mastered copper production. The others are still in the pilot stage." There is no question that the transition to copper, industry-wide will come, ads Puhaka. "But the rate of implementation will be slower than analysts, including myself, had estimated." ...... Two major reasons have kept the United States in the lead in copper tools, says Dornseif. One reason is that the United States produces significantly more logic chips, the chip segment expected to switch to copper interconnects first, than Japan. Japanese chip manufacturers, on the other hand, are large producers of DRAM, a chip segment that is expected last, if ever, to switch to copper interconnects. As a result, several major logic chip manufacturers in the U.S. such as IBM Corp., Motorola Inc., Texas Instruments Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., have been helping drive R&D efforts in copper capital equipment in the U.S., says Dornseif.