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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.
Yeah, I was impressed when we were making 6" wafers a few years ago and darn proud of it. I remember back when they were the size of a US quarter dollar.
I worked in final visual inspection on a 6" line and that was very dicy. You'd get someone failing too many parts, whole wafers in some cases due to what their eye saw as too much FLUC. Tricky balancing act since FLUC identification is more of an art than a science (metering thing is a science with acceptable ranges and such) in that we didn't want to ship things that would fail in the wild, but we didn't want to fail too many things and incrase costs (a wafer at the final end has had a lot of effort put into it).
Oh wait, I just re-read your post. Where you meaning sarcasim or did you not understand what they were talking about?
Wheeeee
I for one am happy to see AMD expanding in a first world country, and employing first world workers, against the trend of sending everything overseas, or of shipping in cut-rate employees from the third world.
From what I have read, for AMD the choice was between a fab in the US, and in Dresden. I think they picked former East Germany because the previous factory doing well, of the high number of skilled workers who are willing to work for relatively low wages, and the Euro starting to make Europe a more attractive place to do business. So again tech jobs are moving to eastwards, but not quite as far this time. Why they didn't go the Malaysia or Philippines as you mentioned I don't know. Perhaps the current unrest in the world?
Too bad for US and Asian workers, congratulations to the Germans.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Thank you AMD for laying the foundation of the Saxony (Silicon) Valley together with Infineon. Thank you for recognizing the talent, education, pracmatism and working power of the patient and friendly Saxony people. Your payback is visible as you are now nearly your break even. Thank for enjoying our great land and cultural as well as industrial heritage.
May also come the great R&D Transmeta, Big Blue, Samsung and Motorola here. You will get our working power and you will fall love too.
Actually, if he said the opposite, I would call it for some kind of racism (not that I would). Employing poor people in poor countries would "force" people in the rich countries to get more "educated" work (and the rich/poor mismatch would be greater) ... but luckily it is not true, the poor would get more money in the hands by even a sh1tty job, increasing their life-conditions (much better than laying in the streets without food).
(yes this can be compared with sex)
why don't they make square wafers then? I'm seriously not being a troll, I assume that the wafer isn't being rolled around or spun, at least after being manufactured.. so why not use a square wafer, or recycle the silicon that's wasted?
I'll admit I know nothing of the production of silicon wafers, but it doesn't seem like it'd be harder to get square ones than round ones, or that it'd be impossible to make round ones, chop off the edges to make it square, ship that to AMD, and then melt the edges down in to another wafer.
And hence, I ask.
Oregon to be exact. They also have a couple plants in Ireland and in Isreal.
Don't forget Arizona and New Mexico.
Also, wafer fab is a very automated process. I have seen some Fab lines, and there are maybe 10 people inside the clean room where the lines are running. Then, there are another 10-20 people in wafer test. Then, maybe a few 10s of people in other locations doing other manufacturing or test processes. But, what you end up with is that you are probably talking about less than 100 people per shift that actually handle or in the case fo the Fab watch devices being made. It is possible I am over guessing, and maybe it is closer to 50 people per shift. The most of the other 800-900 people in a Fab are planners, repair techs, and process engineers. The process engineers though are the ones that make the company money. They are the ones who have to get the yields as high as possible. And, 1% of yield is worth a lot more than whatever salary you pay the process engineers.
they cant produce square wafers.
This kind of cleaning works that way:
you have a silicion rod and move is SLOWLY through a heating device that heats it up enough to let non-silicon atoms migrate.
The end that leaves the heated area slowly cools, and (if all goes right) silicon atoms create a monocrystal. The wrong atoms stay in the heated area and wander to the end which is cut off.
in reallity, you often need many passes...
now, if you would use a square rod, the corners are HIGHLY sensitive and very likely to cause defects in the crystal...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?