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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer who wrote (28483)	2/15/1998 4:22:00 PM
From: Jeff Fox	Respond to of 1572545

Elmer, re: gate array technology Perhaps they do, but the post I was responding to claimed a large die size ~450 sq mm and 50% wasted gates. If this is correct then it would make sense to convert to standard cell. I am cautious about comparing apples to oranges. Gate arrays lay down a matte of transistors with the circuits defined by the wiring. The density is often constrained by the net density, not the device density. The 50% usage compares the used array devices to the total array devices. It is not comparable to standard cell transistor count. Standard cell will however be somewhat denser overall, but this is only one attribute. Gate array techniques are quicker to market and easier to change late in a development. As the i740 is radically new for Intel I am sure that there were lots of turns and twist in its development path. I would bet that the gate array route was found to best meet the overall goals of the program. I have not seen Intel confirm these projects exist, so who's to say how long the i740 will exist as a stand alone product. How about a shrink to .25u as more capacity comes on line? Your thinking is very valid. Perhaps as Intel moves the market to Deshutes there will be a short term excess capacity on the .35 micron lines. If so the i740 can exist nicely in the short term as long as it covers its incremental cost in these fully depreciated fabs. You are very correct that as Intel graphics volume grows it will need to become more efficient in implementation. But this will be at least a year from now. By then I bet the i740 will then be superceded by something better. Jeff