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Technology Stocks : CYRIX / NSM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Engel who wrote (23708)	2/11/1998 11:45:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 33344

Thanks Paul. I talked to IDTI this afternoon and they said that they are using a ceramic package that is less than $9 and suggested that it was cheaper than AMD's package - I didn't dwelve into the reasons why but thought it might be due to the reduced size of the die and different interconnect arrangement. They have the parts assembled in their Malaysian facility which is a bargain now, but I don't suppose that is any different from other semis. I first came up with the 60% yield number from Infrastructure's FEB issue. Today I got that confirmed with IDTI. A couple months ago I suggested to them that they may be able to reach 70% yields with their simplified 4 metal layer, 88 mm die at 0.35 um. They thought that target was too high but now think its a good target for within a few months. I believe they are reaching these yields and that will be confirmed with major semi companies in a couple of weeks. The bad news to the story is that they clamped down on fitting out the Oregon fab after the market dropped out on SRAM and other chip pricing about 18 months ago. That left them with a lot of walls yet to equip. They are now considering a faster build than the expected $125 million capx that was planned. Shows how small IDTI realy is. I guess its posible IDTI is trying to hide the true yield picture but I don't know exactly why they would do that. They said that they have had 39 wafer runs in the Oregon facility - which was brought on line for full produciton just weeks ago. Intel doesn't discuss exact yields with the investment community as far as I know and neither does Cyrix/NSM.