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AMD Breaks Ground on New Chip Facility

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the brand-new-digs dept.

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.

15 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Just so people know ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    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 ...

    The "mm" is not a typo. They are refering to the size of the wafer (?) slices. Which in this case would be about 1 foot in diameter. Incidentally, silicon at that purity in that size costs an arm and a leg. I want to say $10K+ / mm^2, but I think that's a bit high, I can't remember off-hand, but it's a lot. It's amazing that they make any money at all given those prices. Especially since this fab will be obsolete / needing a re-tooling in a few years.

    1. Re:Just so people know ... by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 2, Informative

      Alright - I know my Athlon is bigger than a millimeter squared, but I paid way less than $10,000 for it...

      Tim

      --
      Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
    2. Re:Just so people know ... by digitalunity · · Score: 5, Informative

      Please, for god sakes, do not talk out of your ass. How does this shit get modded up? Just baffles the mind.

      I work in the industry. Your numbers and your assumptions are way off. Fist off, a 200mm polished non-epitaxial silicon wafer is going to cost about $60-75 depending on the specific processing you want done to it. A 300mm wafer isn't a whole lot more. A big piece of the cost of a wafer is the processing, labor, and subsidization of investment capital for the huge plants required to manufacture wafers. The silicon itself isn't terribly expensive. 300mm wafers do not cost an arm and a leg. They are the most cost effective way to produce chips right now and 300mm is the market standard. AMD has been using 200mm wafers in the past but with the larger die size of their newer chips, 200mm is biting into their profits. The problem is silicon wafers are round and CPU dies are square. All of the silicon around the edges is wasted where a whole core won't fit. 300mm makes this wasted silicon a much smaller percentage of the total wafer's surface area.

      Wrong assumption two: 300mm will be here for a while. There are still a lot of companies using 200mm wafers. I know this because I personally make 200mm wafers, and market forecasts has us producing a shit load of 8" wafers for THE NEXT TWO YEARS. 300mm wafer demand is growing, and will continue to grow for quite some time as companies make the transition. I would expect 300mm to be standard until at least '07 or '08. I heard someone talking a while ago about 350mm wafers, but I have a strong suspicion this person was, like you, also talking out their ass. To my knowledge, 300mm is the largest wafer being produced now or in the near future.

      --
      You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
    3. Re:Just so people know ... by MrPink2U · · Score: 2, Informative

      Due to the nature in which silicon crystals are grown, they will always come out round. A seed of perfectly aligned silicon is dipped into a crucible of molten silicon. Both are counter-rotated and the seed is slowly pulled from the melt, thus producing a round crystal.

      I have a feeling that making a square wafer out of a round crystal is possible, but it probably isn't cost effective compared to the current ID saw method.

      I worked in the grower industry for a few years but not in a fab. Someone closer to the industry please correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the waster silicon go back to the supplier for re-purification?

  2. Re:300 mm? I hope that's wrong. by ComaVN · · Score: 5, Informative

    300 mm refers to the size of the wafer. One wafer contains lots of chips.

    --
    Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
  3. Re:300 mm? I hope that's wrong. by affenmann · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's the size of the wafer, the round silicon thing with *many* chips on it.
    See this link (to Intel, inappropriately) for more info.

  4. Re:300mm? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    > Or 300mm^2? I'm guessing the latter, which equates to about 1.73cmx1.73cm

    Nope. that is 300mm in diameter. And that's the diameter of the wafer, not the chip.

  5. 300mm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    This is what 300 mm refers to.

  6. Re:Cost of labor by stetsds · · Score: 5, Informative

    In an interview one of the AMD managers said that worker skill was more important than cost in this case. AMD already has a chip fab in Dresden, employing about 2000.

  7. Re:Cost of labor by romanm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Cost of labor is not the only factor here. By making the company in the Germany the chip becomes an European Union product and is less taxed than the Asian imported chip.

  8. Re:Building size... by FireFury03 · · Score: 2, Informative

    300mm is the diameter of the silicon wafer.
    A large number of dies are constructed on the circular wafer, tested and the wafer is then cut up with a diamond saw. At this point the dies that failed the tests are binned (there certainly used to be a very high failure rate - not sure how high it is these days though).
    AMD makes their CPUs as "flip-chips" these days, thich means that the die is bonded directly onto a PCB, instead of embedding it in ceramic or plastic.

    --
    http://blog.nexusuk.org
  9. Re:Cost of labor by 10Ghz · · Score: 3, Informative

    AMD chips are packaged in Malaysia as well (that's what the "made in Malaysia" refers to). But the actual chips are made in Dresden. Intel's chips are also made elsewhere (for example, Israel).

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    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  10. Re:Cost of labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Devices are marked with the location of the packaging plant, not the location of the fab that made the actual chip inside. Malaysia, Thailand, the Philipinnes and other cheap labour areas are popular locations for packaging plants, as these used to be very labour intensive (they are highly automated now, but the plants haven't moved). Most fabs are located in more developed countries - US, Japan, Taiwan, etc.

  11. Re:Cost of labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    greetings from saxony,

    thanks for the congratulations.
    according to hector ruiz the main selling points of dresden wasn't wages (cost of labour is one of the highest in germany due to all the taxes) *but* high density of skilled workers, universities (laugh at it - but dresden was the center of microporcessor design in former eastern germany since the 60s or so :) and other chip makers. for instance infineon raised their first 300 mm fab there. of course many tool companies like applied materials are allready present there. (this was one of the drawbacks of SE-asia btw. nobody has done 300 mm there yet)

    but the biggest selling points were guarantees for the debts they had to take and a huge chunk of money from the state (saxony) and the federation (frg) - several hundred millions.

    also - opposite to the traditional prejudice about german bureaucracy - all the paper stuff was done real quick and without any hassle for amd. but the state of saxony has somewhat of a track record in this regard. you can see all that prejudices justified 100 miles to the north where intel and some shejkh from dubai want to raise a fab too - for several years now. google for communicant and frankfurt.

    one more thing - amd *might* have build their factory in china too. but present us law prohobits exporting certain technologies there.

    have a good day over there

    andreas

  12. Re:Cost of labor by Plammox · · Score: 2, Informative

    AMD also has factories in Malaysia. It's not the wafer fabs, it's where they assemble the CPUs. Same thing goes for Intel.