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AMD Breaks Ground on New Chip Facility
philthedrill writes "AMD announced that they have broken ground on Fab 36, which again will be located in Dresden, Germany. The 300 mm fab is expected to start volume production in 2006. There's more information at CBS MarketWatch." AMD will be moving from its current 200 mm wafer process, and looking to save money through the higher efficiency of the new process, as well as keep up with expected demand for their next generation processors. The MarketWatch article also contains some speculation about probable partners for AMD.
Wafers are produced as slices from long, round silicium blocks. They have this form because that's the way they come out of the zone heating ovens used to purify the silicium and melt out all the atoms you don't want on the chip. Non silicium atoms cause defects in the crystalline structure because of different size and number of electrons in the shell.
;)
That's one of the issues with 300mm wafers (where 300mm refers to about one foot in diameter): The silicium blocks are wider in diameter, thus needing larger zone heating ovens, thus more energy evenly distributed over the whole zone. If the energy isn't exact the right one in the melting zone, the wrong atoms get out.
The purified silicium blocks then get sawed into thin slices. Larger slices are more prone to breaking during the handling, another issue to overcome while going to larger wafer sizes. They have larger surfaces which could be scratched or damaged.
On the other hand: Once you have the whole process running, you get more chips from the same area
Heh you redneck.
Just as now more than ever, developing nations need overseas investment so they can afford to feed themselves, and the western world needs to slow its development down due to pollution and over-population.
Yeah fuck the africans eh, lets build another factory in a big smoky american city!