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To: maui_dude who wrote (115261)	10/30/2000 8:34:27 PM
From: Saturn V	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Ref < "Hammer will begin with 0.18um, then switch to 0.13um process" Any idea why they would choose this route ? Why not directly on .13 ? The process .13 should be stable enough for samples by now and for volume production in 2-3 quarters. > That should tell you something about the health of the 0.13 micron process at AMD. Obviously the 0.13 micron process is not healthy enough to generate samples or debug a new design. An old pragmatic thumb rule is not to debug a complex brand new design and a brand new process at the same time. When something goes wrong you waste energy figuring out if it is a design problem or process problem. Design and Process engineers do not understand each others discipline. When something goes wrong, they tend to blame the other side, wasting energy. Debugging a new design on an old proven process is a lot safer. Conversely developing a new process on an old design is also easier. I repeat AMD's 0.13 micron is not as far along as the AMD thread would like to believe.

To: maui_dude who wrote (115261)	10/30/2000 9:10:20 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Maui, "Hammer will begin with 0.18um, then switch to 0.13um process" Any idea why they would choose this route ? Why not directly on .13 ? It may be to reduce the number of variables. The .13u process is still probably under development, so a more mature .18u process is used. AMD did the same thing with the first generation of athlon at .25u. Intel is doing the same thing with P4 and Itanium. Joe

To: maui_dude who wrote (115261)	10/31/2000 12:58:47 AM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Maui-Dude - Re: "Hammer will begin with 0.18um, then switch to 0.13um process" Any idea why they would choose this route ? Why not directly on .13 ? The process .13 should be stable enough for samples by now and for volume production in 2-3 quarters. " More than likely, the Hamster is being designed with 0.13 micron transistors and 0.18 micron rules other than the transistor structures. This is how AMD did the original AthWiper - it came out at a relative low voltage - but large die size, using 0.18 micron transistor technology and 0.25 layout rules. As the die size was shrunk to 0.18, the die got a lot smaller (duh !) but the voltage remained the same - and actually increased for higher speed parts. Paul