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

To: Larry Loeb who wrote (38799)	11/3/1997 6:17:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Larry - Re: "Intel was going to move to 300 mm wafers at the same time they moved to the 0.18 micron process. " I don't know where you heard this but I believe I may have suggested the same possibility about 3 or 4 months ago. I believe that the 300 mm wafer program will not be viable for production until mid 1999, and Intel will need to start building MERCED devices in mid 1998. The 300 mm Wafer program should not be an issue, however. Standard 200 mm wafers will produce enough MERCED devices for small scale production and the initial price will make it cost-effective to use these 200 mm (~ 8 inch) wafers. As the MERCED gets adopted and becomes widely deployed for servers and workstations in 1999/2000, the ramp up will coincide with the deployment of 300 mm wafers. Re: "Do you think that Intel/HP might add another metal layer, or two, to the chip. Wouldn't this reduce the die size further?" One report I have read mentioned that the 0.18 micron process will have 6 metal layers as opposed to 5 for the 0.25 micron and 4 metal layers for the 0.35 micron process. My estimate of the die size assumed thet the extra layer would be implemented. Heat dissipation will be impacted by the massive amiunt of transistors and the high operating frequency - but this will be offset by the lower power supply, reputed to be 1.3 to 1.5 volts. Paul Paul