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

To: dougSF30 who wrote (133612)	9/23/2004 5:35:10 PM
From: Pravin Kamdar	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 275872

Doug, Given that, would you rather make your (K8-based Sempron) budget chips on 130nm SOI at 144mm^2 or 90nm SOI at 84mm^2? If we assume that they are at (or near) full capacity, then it does not matter how the deck chair are arranged. What would be important is to have chips on the newer process that could be sold with any value add that that process might give them. For example, if 90nm gives lower power, then mobile chips should be made on it to extract that value; the same for speed considerations. But, if the only difference were die size, then it doesn't matter what is run on what, and the only important thing would be to ramp the new process as fast as possible. On another note, I agree with Petz that it is looking like AMD has hit a frequency wall on 90nm (at least for now). There was an article on xbitlabs stating that new mobile chips in Q1 will still be 2.0Ghz, but will double the cache to 1 Meg to squeeze out a higher model rating (the link isn't working for me right now). This increases the cost of production, and they would not do it if they could just bump the speed. The other explanation is that their power is going way up as speed is increased (just like what happened to Intel). I've said all along that AMD would not be able to avoid the laws of physics at 90nm, even though I was secretly hoping they would pull a rabbit out of their hat. Looks like they haven't. Of course, it is still too early to know for sure. Pravin edit: I can't find the story. Maybe it wasn't on Xbit.