Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

On 50% utililization (Fab 30) -

The theoretical output of Fab 30, which I've seen calculated many times now, does not take into account the realities of supplying several products, current and future, from a single fab. To be fair, the unrealistic numbers were promoted by AMD fans as the fab was being built, and AMD management did nothing to discourage such talk - actually, they encouraged it when Jerry claimed AMD would supply 30% of the CPU market with Athlon.

Now for a dose of reality: This fab is not producing a single product on all lines. At any one time there are lines being taken down for conversion, lines used for transition from engineering to manufacturing, and lines upgraded for finer geometries.

The parts of Fab 30 which aren't being used for production right now include lines that are being converted away from Palamino and TBred-A. TBred-B lines should be coming down by now. Also toss in lines being used to model SOI technology purchased from IBM. Now set aside a bunch of lines for .09 preparation and testing. Lines in production for Hammer include building Opteron inventory, none of which are booked until April.

Fab 30 has generally been around 50% utilization for shipping product for these reasons. The other 50% is busy preparing the future.