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

To: g_w_north who wrote (155188)	4/7/2005 2:09:02 PM
From: dougSF30	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Interesting. Sounds like good news on the first read. Note that even though Fab36 was "designed from the start" to be 65nm, it will apparently produce 90nm output in very early 2006, per Rivet's Feb 24 comments. So are the first wafers he refers to 65nm, or 90nm? Although, with this: "The whole idea is to begin to process 65-nm in the middle of 2005 and bring it into production in 2006. We're certainly on schedule." I would've prefered him to have said H1 06, instead of 2006. Here's the full text: LONDON — Processor vendor Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has started running wafers through Fab36, the company's 300-mm wafer fab located in Dresden, Germany and is on course to have commercial production in 2006, according to Tom Sonderman, the company's director of APM technologies. "We are qualifying equipment as we speak. Fab36 was designed to be a 65-nm from the start. We are making great strides with IBM and our SRAM yields are hitting all our milestones," Sonderman told EE Times in a telephone interview. "The whole idea is to begin to process 65-nm in the middle of 2005 and bring it into production in 2006. We're certainly on schedule." Sonderman said wafers first ran in Fab36 in March 2005 and that first "wafer outs" would occur in the second-half of 2005. He added that only 300-mm wafers would be run at Fab36 in Dresden although the neighboring wafer fab — Fab30 — runs a 90-nm SOI manufacturing process on 200-mm diameter wafers. "The 90-nm transition was very successfully put into Fab30 at close to mature yields. By mid-2005 100 percent of AMD64 manufacturing will be on 90-nanometer SOI wafers," said Sonderman. He added that by then the ramp-up would have taken just six to nine months from first commercial silicon in the fourth quarter of 2004. "One of the big advantages of our Automated Precision Manufacturing system is that we can take 90-nm on 200-mm data from Fab30, 65-nm on 300-mm data from East Fishkill and see the commonalities and apply them to Fab36. Sonderman added that AMD engineers are helping Singapore foundry Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing install the APM system in CHartered's 300-mm wafer fab along with an AMD 90-nm SOI process. Sonderman said that running 90-nm circuits on 300-mm wafers with Chartered would also help build up useful experience.

To: g_w_north who wrote (155188)	4/7/2005 4:04:39 PM
From: kpf	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

g w north Thanks for digging this one up. Smells like AMD will be laying its eggs into the Chartered nest for a while and stretching Fab36 capex a year longer or so. There was an AMD report also in Germany recently saying only half of the planned staff or so for Fab36 is under contract currently "because of a lack of qualified applicants". Well. Now I have an idea how picky AMD will be for the 600 left. ;-) In a bigger frame, Chartered seems to be intended as a bridge for volume until a coordinated Fab36 ramp-up and Fab30 ramp-down will allow for moving skilled and experienced staff in the 07/08 timeframe. Looking at the whole picture this would possibly help AMD to stem its portion of FASLs financing of SP1 in 06 by means of allocating AMD's 06 Capex to Aizu-Wakamatsu. (The very same applies here: Closing down JV1 needs moving staff to SP1 to avoid severance charges). Looks like a reasonable plan to me. Although there will be some discussions about subsidies for creating jobs in Germany, and some renegotiations of financing terms as well, Bob has gone through this before in Dresden. From a more distant viewpoint, what I see evolving here is somewhat typical AMD-handwriting of using other peoples money. A propos - if only for the pun hard to resist - maybe the strategy of putting eggs in others nest for a while is something to consider for investors as well. ;-) K.