Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Elmer Phud]

I will make a comment but I am not directly an expert in fab processes.

When AMD announced they were going to use SOI for Hammer the industry was a bit shocked because SOI was known to be expensive, problematic and the yield was questionable, as were the benefits. Why do it? The concensus was that AMD could not be competitive on bulk silicon and they were doing a "Hail Mary" all or nothing play. It was an extreme risk but the alternative was to get out of the CPU business, so there seemed to be nothing to lose. All was lost anyway otherwise. At the same time Intel said SOI was not in their plans because of the cost, difficulty and little benefit it offered. We had many discussions on the old SI board, including experts in the process field. We all predicted long delays, poor yield and extra expense leading to heavy losses. We did not accurately forecast the performance problems that appear to affecting ClawHammer but I guess that should have been obvious looking back. I was just about the lone voice predicting Hammer's performance wouldn't live up to the hype and I still stand by that position. I think we did a pretty good job of predicting how this would play out but the details remain to be seen.

EP