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

To: Robohogs who wrote (80743)	5/26/2002 1:11:30 PM
From: semiconeng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Last post for day - just read Prudential initiation of UMC at buy. A couple of tidbits on AMD: 130 nm process folks from AMD currently working closely with UMC team to get process of a high enough quality for high end chips. -- Translation: Yield Sucks..... We've got working chips off of UMC's Line, but the Die Yield and/or Bin Splits, and/or Line Yield, is/are too low to manufacture enough high end chips for profit...... At This Time...... Limited shipments for AMD in 2H '02 with good volumes in 2Q '03. -- Translation: The Glorius, Motivated, Wonderful, Smart, Excellent, Fabulous, Process Engineers (sorry, couldn't resist), have identified and contained the excursions, brainstormed the problems, and we think we have the fixes. We're HOPEFULL that some, if not all, of their fixes will work. Experimental Wafer splits are starting in-line, Awaiting Data...... AMD process capabilities should significantly enhance UMC mfg competitiveness (according to analyst - did couch statement somewhat). Jon -- Translation: Having TWICE the number of Glorius, Motivated..... (OK OK, I'll give ya a break)..... Will certainly make the Process better, because after all, two heads are better than 1...... :-) Semi

To: Robohogs who wrote (80743)	5/29/2002 3:40:15 PM
From: dale_laroy	Respond to of 275872

My take on the current AMD/UMC situation. >A couple of tidbits on AMD: 130 nm process folks from AMD currently working closely with UMC team to get process of a high enough quality for high end chips.< Athlon XP, even Barton, will not be a high end chip by the time UMC comes online. This means that AMD is is working with UMC to enable the production of Hammer at 130nm, rather than waiting for the 90nm node. AMD may never need to produce Hammer processors at UMC, but having the ability to do so could come in handy. If all of Fab30 were used to produce Clawhammer processors at 104mm2 die size, significantly fewer processor could be produced than if 20% of Fab30 were used to produce Thoroughbred processors at 84mm2. Additionally, the benefits from using 300mm wafers increase with increasing die size, so it makes sense to produce as many larger die size processors as possible using 300mm wafers. Thus, by having an 80% Athlon XP64 and 20% Athlon XP ratio at Fab30 and the same ratio at UMC, the limit on how many processors AMD can supply is higher than if AMD were to produce 100% Athlon XP64 at Fab30 and UMC were to produce 100% Athlon XP. > AMD process capabilities should significantly enhance UMC mfg competitiveness (according to analyst - did couch statement somewhat). UMC is the primary beneficiary for the initial part of the agreement. Most of the process development work will be done by AMD, with UMC essentially adopting(adapting) AMD's process for their own 90nm production. My guess is that, since UMC will have excess capacity for the foreseeable future, AMD will be getting processors from UMC at lower cost than they could produce them at Fab30. UMC benefits because, even if they are selling the chips at a loss, the loss would be less than if they let the capacity sit idle, and they offload some of the process development costs to AMD. AMD benefits because they get low cost production and access to 300mm equipment for process development. Dale LaRoy Splitstone