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

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (46616)	1/19/1999 10:14:00 AM
From: Kevin K. Spurway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572894

Sorry if this has already been posted: ebnews.com "Intel-based PCs fell from 75.1% of overall unit sales [mail order and retail PC markets] in the 1997 fourth quarter to about 49.5% in the most recent period, the Reston, Va. market research firm found. During the same comparable period, the share of systems powered by AMD processors grew from 13.3% to 26.2% while Cyrix saw its share grow from 3.1% to 14.6%. The results represent 55% of the U.S. PC mail-order and retail channel and does not include figures from direct-sales OEMs such as Dell Computer Corp. " Kevin

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (46616)	1/19/1999 1:42:00 PM
From: RDM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572894

By pilot production I mean that the quantity of production is determined by the risk and not the customer need. In the early phases of product ramp it may be necessary to rework or scrap the wafers. The question is the "real or normal production" ? The completed parts may be sold or sampled to customers. This makes it real, but it is not ordinary. Many of the wafer lots may not be taken all the way to final assembly. Wafers may be held at early metalization stages waiting for test results. Testing software may be incomplete and preliminary. These are some of the things that may be associated with the initial low volume production that I called a pilot run.

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (46616)	1/21/1999 12:25:00 PM
From: MikeyB	Respond to of 1572894

"What do you mean by pilot run? Would the first 500-1000 wafers be real production or not?" the term that amd uses is "risk production". Why? Because ALL of the wafers are at risk of being scrapped. The mask sets that are being used are BELIEVED to be production ready, but are NOT proven to be production ready. By production ready, I mean able to produce fully functional, salable chips. So its real production in the sense that IF the mask set is proven, you have salable parts. Its not real production in the sense that volume is low (because of the risk of having to scrap them) and provide the technicians/operators with experience running the new product. MikeyB