Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Elmer Phud]

Sgolds -

What I'm asking you to do is work the timeline backwards and see what makes sense. With a September volume retail intro, 3 months time makes sense to build inventory. So they start getting their first material in June/July. So the first production lots went into fab about 3 months before that. Total 6 months. A Sept retail release means the production silicon is starting just about now, give or take a couple of weeks. One way to speed things up is to hold some material from a previous stepping at one of the metal layers. A logic fix in metal is common. That would save a month or more if they had lots of material stacked up but it would also be very expensive if the fix can't be done in metal and the material has to be scrapped. It is unlikely the problem is a logic bug but more likely a process problem which would probably require a full mask set. Back to square one with not only starting the wafers from scratch but qualifying and validation.


If Sept is the start of delivery to oems then, working backwards, the material isn't in fab yet, which means they haven't completed their new stepping/process fix or whatever combination of problems have delayed it for so long. If that is the case then how can we assume it's fixed and they can meet their schedule? The risk would remain very high.

If you are correct and September release is just another AMD vapor launch with production material only just beginning to trickle out to oems, then AMD is in a whole lot more trouble then I thought and I haven't been kind in my thinking.