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

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34200)	3/29/2001 11:33:25 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

TWY, I think you are looking for ways IBM could fab thing for AMD. Was there anything in the press and annual statement blurbs that makes you consider to be a strong probability? Wouldn't it make more sense for AMD to structure the deal similar to the one with Motorola, which was just a transfer of expertise and some joint development? In that case, I don't know how much would be in it for IBM I'm sure they cut AMD a good deal since Davari/Shahidi/et al. want SOI to move into the mainstream in the worst way. If SOI is very important, and IBM has a lead, why would IBM want to bring it to the mainstream - meaning selling the expertise? Wouldn't it erode the premium they can get for fabbing SOI devices? Or do you mean by bringing it to mainstream, signing on more customers for foundry services who demand SOI, so that IBM can internally convert more of their capacity to SOI? Joe

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34200)	3/30/2001 12:07:34 PM
From: fyodor_	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

TWY: To me, the .13um mobile (Thoroughbred) makes the most sense. It should be under 60mm2 on the .13um IBM process and quite inexpensive to manufacture. I think your 60mm² estimate is too low. Currently, the Thunderbird comes in at 120mm². (Mobile) Palomino is expected to have a bunch of new features (PowerNow! for sure, SSE, prefetching, etc. rumored), which will almost certainly increase the die size at least marginally. Add another 25mm² for the additional 256kB L2 cache expected to be present on the Tbred and you get around 150mm² on .18mu, where roughly 50mm² is L2 cache. AMD's SRAM cell size is unbelievably huge, so let's reduce this by 1/3. That brings Tbred to 133mm² on .18mu. Assuming ideal die size reduction when going to .13mu (52% of original size) brings us to 70mm². I'll stand by my previous estimate of 80mm² ;-) I have, obviously, not included possible additional metal layers of IBM's .13mu SOI process in the estimate. -fyo