AMD strictly moderated (AMD)

[bobs10]

Some things of note from the Inquires article:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30385

"I visited Dresden two weeks ago, which is when the ramp up began."

and...

"The company execs recently gave the green light to ramp up the production to 13.000 wafer starts a week."

and...

"However, the situation is not entirely rosy. We've heard partners and distributors spreading a lot of bitter comments regarding AMD's tight supply of the processors, which is allegedly due to the "extreme success" of the Opteron Series 800's, which customers are really buying like there's no tomorrow."

And…

"The other buzz is that AMD has yield problem, and that's the main reason why some wafers are being built with strained SOI and others on "regular" SOI wafers."

me...

I was expecting the ramp to have started sooner than the date given. However, one has to remember AMD has had a rather long 90nm, fab36 development cycle so there are probably lots of pre-production chips to sell. At least enough so that AMD can still claim production sales in q1.

The rather bold move to 13,000 wspw out of the gate is probably the best indication that 90nm production is now mature and costs per chip are less than fab30. One could also read into the production starts that AMD is confident about selling what is going to be a huge number of new chips hitting the market. Otellini has to be shaking in his boots, or he should be.

It's hard to find anything not to like about the third blurb. Tight supply in general and AMD's top ASP chips selling like hotcakes has got to warm the cockles (are those like chicken nuggets?) of any AMD investor.

As far as strained SOI goes, maybe he's talking about DSL strain versus rev "F" strain? My understanding is that all AMD chips have some form of strain. Anyway, this is the first I've heard of this problem.