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AMD Receives $683M for Dresden Plant
Cocooner writes "Infoworld has an article explaining how AMD received $683 million in grants from Germany and the state of Saxony for its next-generation microprocessor wafer facility. The new plant will be located in Dresden, adjacent to Fab 30 and will be called Fab 36. It will be the first AMD 300mm manufacturing facility."
No, it isn't a typo. They are talking about the size of the silicon wafer, not the processor itself. If you had RTFA, you would have known that the whole point of this is that is more cost effective to use bigger silicon wafers since more processors can then be made out of a single wafer.
"The facility, named AMD Fab 36, will produce chips on 300 millimeter wafers and is expected to employ 1,000 people. Full volume production is scheduled for 2006, the Sunnyvale, California, company said."
I know, it's a typo...
Actually, it isn't. 300mm is the diamaeter of a complete wafer, from which multiple die are cut.
garethw
Dream on, corporations of their size hardly have to pay taxes in Germany. Especially in the former GDR.
And because of their size these are called 'Pizza Wafers'.
The die size of an Athlon XP is about 129mm^2, so at 3/4 surface usage about 410 Athlons would fit on a single wafer. Must be really cheap to produce those things...
-- www.linux-laser.org - Open Source Laser Show Software for Linux
The parent just pulled "facts" out of his ass.
Opteron X -> isnt planed
5Ghz Fsb -> Opteron has no fsb
500mm -> even intel says that the next 5 years they wont TRY creating bigger than 300mm wafers,
65nm -> 2008 65nm will be old stuff...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Of course, they aren't really giving money away to AMD. It is rather in the form of tax rebates and the like - it is not losing any money, just not bringing in as much as if AMD had paid full rates on everything (and the reality is that likely AMD would have gone elsewhere and not paid a dime).
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No. You must be unaware of the 'multiplier effect' in economics, you can read up here. Basically, if there is surplus productive capacity in a economy (which Germany surely has) a stimulative effect at employing that surplus will have spill over benefit to everyone (chip makers need bakers, burger flippers etc) economically 'near' them. The money goes round the economic circle and multiplies.
As Germany is in a depressed economic position (lots of deflationary pressures) such fiscal stimulus is useful (this was the argument for the Bush tax cuts - but that was probably unnecessary in the US (and was not 'directed' to undercapacity areas of the economy), but is much more necessary in Germany), not that this is a cure-all as German is suffering really bad structural problems too.
Then there is the money multiplier concept (a not very good definition here) which explains how money increases as the definition broadens - is cash money, but the amount of money on deposit is greater than all cash in circulation and in bank tills This is a seperate issue and not relevant to this discussion, but a fine demonstation that of all things in life, money is one ofthe finest examples of something which multiplies.
> Eastern Germany suffers from extreme
> unemployment (up to 20% in some areas)
Actually, the average unemployment is just below 20%.
I really doubt that. Most of that 2 billion will be going to companies like Applied Materials. Sure there will be local contractors involved in constructing the buildings (i.e. the grunt work), but all the really expensive bits that go inside will come from foreign multinationals.
What Saxony is really paying all that money for is the creation of jobs. When you do the math 600k per job ain't all that bad. Lets say the average salary will be 50k per year, so in that case you could argue that "the local economy" will make that back in 12 years. The EU actually has rules against these kinds of state subsidies, but because the Fab is being built in former East Germany it's being exempted.
Governments can, in certain circumstances get permission from the EU for state aid to companies. (Not that I have any idea what those circumstances are. :) )