Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Paul Engel who wrote (48761)	7/23/2001 2:27:14 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

"AMD RUNS THROUGH PROCESS AND EQUIPMENT CHANGES FASTER THAN INTEL and incurs - on a per fab basis - FASTER DEPRECIATION than Intel " Could be. But Intel just finished converting a bunch of fabs over to 0.18 micron, only to have to switch over to copper and 0.13 micron to keep up with AMD. What happens to all of that 0.18 capacity now?

To: Paul Engel who wrote (48761)	7/23/2001 2:46:56 PM
From: dale_laroy	Respond to of 275872

>Now - take AMD's fabs-< I really do not dissagree with your position, but you are not giving very sound arguments. >Fab 25 was started out as a 0.5 micron fab in 1995 - and because of the K5 disaster, it had to be converted RAPIDLY to 0.35 processing.< Fab 25 was not converted rapidly to 0.35-micron. The fact is that, because of the K5 disaster, AMD did not have very much 0.5-micron equipment installed. AMD changed over to installing 0.35-micron equipment in a nearly empty fab. Had K5 been on time and sold in volume, your argument would have been true. >When the K6 arrived at 0.35 micron, it had a limited scalability and once again Fab 25 had to be UPGRADED to 0.25 micron in 1998 !!< Once again, your argument is erroneous. K6 had plenty of headroom at 0.30-micron, but AMD chose to focus on 0.25-micron instead. The 0.25-micron (interconnects) K6-2 reached 550 MHz, and had AMD chosen to optimize the K6 core the way that they did the K6-2 core, it could have reached the same clock speed at 0.25-micron. These same optimizations at 0.30-micron would have resulted in at least a 350 MHz, and probably a 400 MHz peak speed grade using these design rules. But why would AMD want to continue producing a 157mm2 K6 core when they could produce a 81mm2 K6-2 core? AMD did indeed get very little use out of the 0.30-micron equipment, but this had very little to do with the scalability of the K6 core. >Then, after the AThWiper was introduced in 1999 at 0.25 micron, Fab 25 had to be UPGRADED once again to 0.18 micron.< Once again, the upgrade of Fab 25 was by choice, not forced upon AMD. AMD could have potentially shrunk the Athlon core by implementing the K75 improvements at 0.22-micron, and reached 1.0 GHz at 0.22-micron in the process, but they chose to upgrade the equipment instead. >I'll let you fill in the blanks on FAB 30 and how it had to be upgraded from aluminum to copper before it even got off the ground !< Well, Fab30 would be doing just fine up to now without copper. The problem is that in 2003 they would have two processor fabs to be converted over to Flash production, and no replacement in sight. >FACT - AMD RUNS THROUGH PROCESS AND EQUIPMENT CHANGES FASTER THAN INTEL and incurs - on a per fab basis - FASTER DEPRECIATION than Intel< I agree, but you can not win this argument by only presenting the case for AMD. You have to compare AMD to Intel.