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

To: heatsinker2 who wrote (82918)	6/19/2002 2:00:30 PM
From: wanna_bmw	Respond to of 275872

Heatsinker, Re: "they plan to transition most of the entire fab in one quarter >> I'm not sure I agree. It's just one fab and they already have some months (including pilot runs) of experience with .13." I'm not talking about experience in .13u manufacturing. I'm sure AMD has all the experience running the equipment that they need. What I mean is finding a way to stop all .18u wafer starts, and start a whole bunch of .13u wafer starts, all in a relatively small amount of time. Like I said, I'm not an expert here, but this definitely sounds high risk to me, since I can only assume it's more complicated than just tuning the measurements of all their machines from one setting to another. I would think that small differences between their machines require attention on an individual basis - not something that can be done all at once. Plus, getting all the new masks in place, being able to fine tune the thousands of steps in the process to meet defect density requirements, as well as bin splits, and working out new issues that arise from changing the minor detail in the fab, all cannot be done in a three month time with much success. I believe the efficiency of Dresden will likely be worse than it has been in the previous quarters, but AMD is probably banking on continued lower demand. The quicker they get the bugs worked out, the quicker they can prepare for a recovery, but with demand lower than expected right now, they might as well throw efficiency to the wind, and get the transition done right away. Seems logical to me, but it also suggests that the next couple quarters will have guaranteed low output from Dresden. wbmw