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

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (207960)	8/8/2006 4:13:29 PM
From: Elmer Phud	Respond to of 275872

Is there much difference in the processing time between Intel and AMD processors ? I've assumed both are roughly 12 weeks. Is that close ? I would think it's pretty much independent of which specific product is being fabed. I don't know how TPT compares between the 2 companies.

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (207960)	8/8/2006 4:39:41 PM
From: NicoV	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

The 12 weeks is caused because of batch processing (heating a batch of (up to 200) wafers in the same furnace). A number of wafers must wait until there are enough wafers available for a batch processing step, which is not the case when a single wafer is processed at a time. I remember an article in IEEE Spectrum explaining to move from batch processing to single wafer processing (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb05/2292). They claim that moving from batch processing to 100% single wafer processing can shorten the total processing time from 90 days to 30 days (example from Renesas). The shorter production cycle of single wafer processing should improve the ability to adapt to changing market conditions, and could prevent giant inventory issues like in 2001. AMD certainly uses some single wafer equipment, as you can see from this press release from Axcelis (I can't find it back on the Axcelis site, but here's an other link:http://www.www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20050929042449.html). I actually bought a small number of Axcelis share because of this press release, under the assumption that AMD is very smart in choosing technologies (worked well for me with Soitec). Since then, Axcelis has rapported several other customers for their single wafer equipment.