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

To: Dan3 who wrote (76579)	4/6/2002 10:19:04 AM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 275872

"Intel is the Trabant of CPU companies " Now this isn't fair. It was a wise decision on Intel's part, after all, they were already taking a big risk with implementing copper. Apparently, AMD ran into a problem with their chosen approach in early 2000, that is about when the talk of 0.15 micron stopped, and their interest in SOI took hold. As a result, AMD is about a half a generation behind. Luckily, the Palomino core is a pretty strong one, it looks as if it can hit 1.8GHz (albeit barely) on 180nm. Imagine if it was like the PIII and topped somewhere around 1.2GHz... For want of better information, let's assume that AMD ran into some problem with FSG on their original process. It could have been that leakage was too high, the R/C was too high, or some combination. To solve the problems resulted in a chip that was too power hungry or too slow, or likely some combination of the two. A possible solution might be to spread things out more, but then the resulting chip is so much larger... Anyway, I guess AMD decided they needed a better low-k than FSG and also needed to look at SOI. Intel decided not to. It actually works for them for a number of reasons, but they will likely have to confront the low-k problem at the 90nm node. If AMD has a workable solution for low-k, they might have a much easier transition to 90nm than Intel will. Ok, AMD might decide they need something really spiffy and new at 90nm and run into delays because of that. But, if they don't, they very well may start production when Intel is still sampling Prescott. it might make 2003 very interesting for Intel. In the sense of the ancient Chinese curse...