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

To: Saturn V who wrote (252203)	5/21/2008 9:53:52 AM
From: Elmer Phud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

But you have made assertions that AMD yields are inferior, but neither Intel nor AMD publish their absolute wafer yields. Intel does indeed publish relative defect densities between their various process nodes, but it is not clear how that relates to absolute yields wrt AMD. The term "yield" is somewhat misleading because a smaller die will "yield" better than a larger one on the same process, so it isn't a good means of comparison. Defect density (DD) is the proper comparison and there Intel claims to be "World Class"(WC), but so does AMD. WC is generally considered to be <0.25d/cm2 or thereabouts. Intel has not published an actual DD number but AMD has stated publicly their's is <0.5d/cm2. Considering AMD's propensity to shall we say, overstate, I take that to mean 0.499999999+ at best, which is quite bad by industry standards for a dedicated fab. Their use of an SOI process is generally considered inherently lower yielding and more expensive plus AMD uses more metal layers than Intel and more complexity means more chance of defects. Add in an oversized die and AMD's cost structure is at a real disadvantage. I am sure that the courts will have access to the actual data, and they will draw their own conclusions. AMD knows that, and is praying that it will get the sympathy of the Court, and hope for a new creative interpretation of the law which can keep AMD alive. I guess it all boils down to the cost standard used by the Court. There have been several attempts here to claim that the EEC may be the standard but frankly despite numerous claims no one has found a single instance where the court has actually used that standard in a similar case. Despite a valiant effort, apparently all claims actually show the opposite. Thanks go to Sarmad for following all those references. My guess is that Intel knew exactly what the case law allowed in the way of pricing and followed it to the letter. We will find out in the fullness of time.