Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Maui]

Elmer, Re : "[Use extra metal layers] Why else do it?"

For extra performance. Chip designers seldom shy away from extra available layer. You can always use an extra layer to distribute/minimize cross-cap on a given ayer, allowing you to jack up frequency without functional failure. You can put more deCaps in, more routing to connect to repeaters, all allowing for higher performance.

If intel want to fight the performance battle only, with AMD, thats a card they can play and get on par with the number of layers AMD uses. Of course, like you mentioned before, it comes with a cost to yield.

Maui.