Replies to post #63220 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[wbmw]

Re:APM is nothing more than AMD copying Intel's Copy Exactly methodology
Actually, no... APM is the factory automation, data collection, and feedback system. It keeps track of every wafer, where it has been, when it was there, who did what to it, etc... It also keeps track of measured results from that wafer... CD's, yields, bin splits, etc...

Alan, Intel's fab processes have done this for years, and they didn't need to put press releases out for it because it was just common sense. APM also has a lot of Copy Exactly methods, which is why I made the comparison. In the end, though, AMD is just making a big deal about something that many in the industry already do well.

Re: One thing we can be certain of is that Intel has many, many more engineers working on this than AMD does. To believe that AMD has a better system is just wishful thinking.

Exactly. Intel has also been mastering these techniques for many years, while AMD is the newcomer. Their engineers are just now learning these processes, while the processes have been at place at Intel for a decade or more.

[Ixse]

Re: One thing we can be certain of is that Intel has many, many more engineers working on this than AMD does. To believe that AMD has a better system is just wishful thinking.

True Intel has more engineers for everything. Also for cpu design. Boy did they mess up, particularly with their mainstream cpu line. Sure Intel has many more engineers working on aspects of process automation as well, but it's rather dense to think this by itself should suffice to exclude the possibility that Intel messed up once more(they're quite capable of that too).

Regards,

Rink

[bobs10]

It's really refreshing getting another INTC view of things. Our primary source is smelling like year old Limburger cheese.

As I've said I'll leave it to the technical types to fight it out, but just from a seat of the pants view AMD must be doing something right given the large apparent increases in supply of processors we've seen lately. While a lot of that has undoubtedly been due to 90nm it looks to be something more than just that. AMD was stuck at about 7m chips for the longest period of time, and now it looks like they are at about 10+m per quarter. That's a big increase without any increase in fab space. Yeah, I know AMD was supposed to get a 50% increase from 90 nm, but that's after a few tweaks/times through the fab.

Since sales are always a quarter behind production starts q4 should see even more production as what ever it is that's causing the big increases in supply gets full implemented. If AMD gets through q4 without any major bottlenecks I'll be truly amazed.

I don't expect AMD to give us any hard processor numbers, but I'll bet we can get pretty close to the actual numbers after the CC. I can hardly wait.