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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.
300 mm refers to the size of the wafer. One wafer contains lots of chips.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
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.
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.
greetings from saxony,
:) 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)
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
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
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.