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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (21774)	12/7/2000 8:31:09 AM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 275872

Re: If AMD gains an advantage over Intel, I believe it will be on the basis of a superior design.... NOT a higher performing process. I don't think anyone expects AMD to catch up to IBM's process, much less surpass it - certainly I don't. So the fact that IBM is ahead of everyone else, and that IBM has learned, and publicly announced, that .13 alone much less compelling than .13 SOI, is meaningfull. AMD is following IBM's lead to an enhanced .13 process, while Intel (in public statements, at least) is going with a pretty straight .13 process. I think IBM, followed by AMD, was right about moving to copper on .18 making some sense, and I think the same thing may be happening with SOI for .13. Regards, Dan

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (21774)	12/7/2000 12:04:35 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 275872

Dear Watsonyouth: SOI places the active regions of a chip in tubs of SiO2. This reduces the parasitic capacitance and substrate leakage that occurs. Both contribute to a lowering of the power required for CMOS logic circuits. Using a low-K dielectric for these tubs would reduce even further the power required. If the chips are limited by how much heat they dissipate, reducing the amount of power used and thus, heat generated, the logic can then run faster. Remember that energy used per transition is approximately C*V^2/2 where V is the delta voltage between high and low logic states and C is the total capacitance of the connection being transitioned. By reducing C, the heat dissipated goes down proportionately. By reducing the leakage, another heat source is eliminated (I have heard this may account for up to 10% of the power dissipated in a CPU). Thus, SOI itself can generate some decent gains. It just depends on what one thinks is a decent gain. Pete