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

To: Craig Freeman who wrote (56518)	4/26/1999 9:35:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571926

<Other than the issue of yields, did I miss something?> Larger die sizes contributes to fewer dies (dice?) per wafer. I'm under the impression that AMD can't push any more wafers through their fab than they already are, i.e. capacity-constrained. So with the K7, even if the yields start out identical to the K6-2 (which is unlikely), the sheer die size of it means AMD can't crank out as many K7's as they can K6-2's. Then factor in the inevitable lower yields, and you'll have very low initial volumes of K7. Tenchusatsu

To: Craig Freeman who wrote (56518)	4/27/1999 3:27:00 AM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571926

Craig - Re: "Other than the issue of yields, did I miss something?" Yes. The price TSMC charges for a wafer depends on the PROCESS - logic, EEPROM, FLASH, DRAM, etc. and the MINIMUM feature size, and the number of METAL layers, etc., and the VOLUME of wafers. You calculated an AVERAGE. That includes a lot of 0.35 and 0.5 micron wafers. To get the highest performance that TSMC has, you have to PAY MORE. And their highest performance will not match a single, dedicated wafer fab process - such as an IBM or AMD or Intel - for performance. Paul