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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (147422)	11/11/2001 1:43:03 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

The silicon side of a CPU is basically the cost of a silicon wafer divided by how many chips can come off of that wafer. Packaging and test are now also a large fraction of cost. Didn't used to be that way but it is now. EP

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (147422)	11/11/2001 2:41:49 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: Messing with 70nm gate lengths tends to lower yields, you know. Intel is putting up a brave face, claiming that Athlon is really a .13 chip now (at the same time they trumpet beating AMD to .13 - they should pick a story and stick to it), but here's an independent 3rd party analysis of .18 copper Athlon from a company that dissects chips and sells the information they gain. Their dissection of a P4 shows the same gate lengths as Athlon, despite the hopes of Intel fans. Note that, whatever gain Intel will be from receiving from going to low-K has already been "used up" to make P4: Structural Analysis Report Intel® 1.5 GHz Pentium® 4 Processor Billed by Intel as the fastest desktop platform in the world, the Pentium 4 Processor achieves a 1.5 GHz operating speed through exciting process advances that include 0.09 micron transistor gates (as-drawn), a 0.18 micron process and low-k dielectric. The Pentium 4 Processor's nearest competitor, the AMD™ Athlon™ Processor, operates at speeds up to 1.2 GHz. It has a 0.18 micron process and gate lengths as small as 0.09 microns but uses 6-level copper metallization, not low-k dielectric. semiconductor.com. Structural Analysis Report 1 GHz AMD™ Athlon™ Microprocessor Using Copper Interconnect The 1 GHz AMD Athlon is a next-generation microprocessor suited to computation-intensive applications that run on high-end desktop systems, workstations and servers. Its 0.18 micron process technology with gate lengths as small as 0.09 microns, 6-level copper metallization with dual damascene processing and 256K on-chip L2 cache are features that make this device well worth a close look. semiconductor.com. Now, I think it's become clear that .18 copper has an advantage over .18 Aluminum (despite Intel's squeals to the contrary), so Athlon does have that advantage, but then Athlon also has the advantage of SOI coming up, so AMD can be expected to maintain a small but significant process advantage. Intel has already received whatever gains it will get from low-K - and the difficulty in polishing low-K material may explain what appear to be Intel yield problems. The "old" Athlon core clearly outperforms the P4 core. AMD has a new 64 bit core coming next year, with an extended pipeline to allow faster clock speeds - Intel won't have another major new core for 3 to 5 years. AMD's new core will have the marketing advantage of 64 bits - and that's got to be a very big advantage, especially with Intel pushing 64 bit Itanium, SUN pushing 64 bit Sparc, and IBM pushing 64 bit PowerPC. The only 32 bit chip remaining with any pretensions to performance will be P4. And the indications are that its real performance won't be able to keep up with an SOI Hammer and that its marketing "performance" will have a tough time challenging a 64 bit CPU when it can only claim 32 bits.