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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Saturn V who wrote (180787)	4/16/2005 10:54:27 AM
From: Elmer Phud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Saturn Is it practical to add new wafer fab capacity quickly for an old process? Can the designs be farmed out to a foundry ? Yes they can be farmed out for older processes but it takes time. The design has to be adapted to the particular process and qualified to ensure it meets quality standards. Also as processor volume rolls off 130nm and onto 90nm it frees up more capacity for the older products. Intel wouldn't contract out anything truly strategic. That's what all those fabs are for. Considering the many product lines Intel has and the complexity of capacity planning it's inevitable that shortages will occur at some time. I remember once discussing a test issue with an Intel manufacturing manager. He needed 100ms cut off the test time of a particular extremely high volume product. That would save the need to knock out a wall and expand an already huge complex to get more floor space for test. 100ms was all it took to cause major ripples through the production infrastructure. The point being that the bottleneck may not be fab, it could be anything. Try planning that years out with something as dynamic as semiconductors. If what you are hearing is true this could mean that some product is experiencing a significant upside in demand. I have reason to think this may be happening too. I hope Intel will touch on this in their CC next week.