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

To: kapkan4u who wrote (49709)	8/2/2001 9:46:24 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 275872

"If SOI goes bust because of bad yields or high manufacturing costs it may happen as late as the end of 2002." The risks, high manufacturing costs and low throughput. Low yield is another potential problem. Again, it all depends on certain key details which AMD has not been open about. Like, what kind of SOI layer are we talking about? When you look at the details released so far, the SOI layer is really thin. So are they growing it in situ? If so, then the low throughput may not be a problem, although the potential for a hit to yields still may. But it would neatly sidestep the pinhole problem that implanted wafers have. It would also get around the high manufacturing costs, pre-implanted wafers are really expensive. I have to believe that AMD has at least tried this on 0.18 micron, if not a few 0.13 micron wafers in the lab. Of course, as Intel's "botched transistor" process showed, translating from the lab to production can be fraughr with pitfalls. But Jerry has never been shy about swinging for the fences, if he was, he would have taken Atiq's advice and sold the Dresden fab. And we would not be having this discussion. The question really boils down to "why is AMD so bullish on SOI right now?". True, they needed some good news at the last CC, the warning put a damper on things and the SOI announcement has enormous implications. But I also remember that Hammers were supposed to have taped out at the end of Q4, 2000. That would have meant that there are likely some working chips floating around in AMD-land, and have been for at least a few months. No doubt there still are some errata that need to be addressed and no doubt they are well into their second spin of the silicon, but they have to have some idea of how well it works and at least some vague understanding of how their SOI process will do in production. Being the optimist that I am, I choose to believe that they are pleasantly surprised and that is why they are pushing SOI so hard. I think that the bulk 0.13 micron ponies would have enough headroom to at least keep present market share and ASPs without SOI, so there is no reason for Barton unless things are going well. That is assuming that AMD is not going to contract with IBM or TSMC for Barton, something I can't discount...