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

To: Elmer who wrote (86965)	8/15/2002 1:06:06 AM
From: semiconeng	Respond to of 275872

I think this same guy said they were running 200 WPW of pilot Hammer production. If it is pilot production that would allow for 10s of thousands of die from only 200 WPW. Don't you think AMD would introduce Hammer now if they could make ~40K per week? I think they would. Also I think we would see good solid demonstrations of fully operational systems well before pilot production. We haven't seen that. As for what time, if any, would be necessary to "reconfigure" the fab, I'll let someone with more process experience than I answer that one. EP Depends. Assuming that AMD's 0.13u is production ready (big assumption IMO), there really isn't a huge reconfiguration required. For example, intel runs the P3 Tualatin and P4 Northwood on the same production line simultaneously. The differences are in the Litho Photomasks, and possibly different recipes to achieve different parameters on the Other Fab Process tools. It shouldn't require different tools for Bulk Si, SOI is probably a different story. You need to have the Etch, Thin Films, Diffusion and Litho Resist recipes ready at startup, although you don't need to have all the Litho photomasks on site in order to start the product. The first few layers, sure, but the Metal Layers won't be needed for weeks. So, there isn't really a hard "Reconfiguration" start/end, it's more like a phase in. How long that takes, depends on the initial health of the Process recipes delivered by the Development site, the delivery of the Photomasks on schedule, the results of the in-line data, and the expertise of your Process Engineers. :-) Like I said, JMO, but based on what AMD has demonstrated so far, "By Christmas", sounds awfully fast to me. I'm not saying it can't be done, but the last time I saw an attempt to implement a New Process and Product at that suggested speed....... It turned into a "fiasco". Semi