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For AMD Success Means Problems
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Oct 26, 2006 02:18 PM
from the too-much-money dept.
from the too-much-money dept.
An anonymous reader writes "AMD's success with its dual-core Opteron and Athlon processors has created something of a happy problem for the company. It can't make its products fast enough to meet demand. Just the same, with the Intel price war heating up and new 65-nanometer manufacturing technology being implemented in its factories, AMD has a lot of balls in the air right now." From the News.com article: "AMD's current pickle is the result of its success, which makes it a little easier to swallow for company executives. Demand is high, but the company's dual-core processors still use its 90-nanometer manufacturing technology. Intel's chips, on the other hand, are built using the smaller transistors provided by its 65-nanometer manufacturing technology. Not only is AMD using larger transistors, but its dual-core Opteron and Athlon 64 processors contain two processing cores integrated onto a single piece of silicon, or a die. This design has given AMD great performance during the past few years, but resulted in processors that were almost twice the size of its single-core chips."
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I hate it when... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"AMD has a lot of balls in the air right now."
"AMD's current pickle[...]"
"[...]makes it a little easier to swallow[...]"
Re:Oblig. Boondock Saints (Score:5, Funny)
He lost me at "falic".
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"hehe... he said balls"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Understood: licensing issues.
Understand: market demand.
If ATI produces more enlightened products, your market goes by way of Soviet Russia.
Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I have nothing against AMD, I like there fact there is healthy competition in the chip world. Makes for better/faster/cheaper products for us consumers.
Re:Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Since Apple first announced Intel I thought that it was pretty obvious why they went that route rather than AMD. This, right here, was one of the main reasons. Supply programs have haunted Apple for quite some time. Why switch to a new architecture just to get more of the same?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Except that it wouldn't be the same. Apple was dependent on Motorola and later IBM because they were the only suppliers of the PPC chips they needed for the Mac. However, since AMD and Intel both make x86 chips that function the same, they wouldn't be dependent on AMD if they went that route because they could switch over to Intel chips at any time without much trouble (and vice-versa I su
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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You realize that when AMD moves from 90 to 65, they're going to get ~25% increase in yield? (possibly less, since more chips = more potential defects)
AMD has been using the previous generation of fabbing & is still strongly competing with Intel.
I just hope AMD has a better transition plan for the 65nm to 40nm switch, which will most likely be the industry's final step down in size.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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As if Apple sells enough computers that it would really matter anyway...
Hmm, Apple's US market share is about 5%. AMD's US market share is about 18%. So had Apple gone with AMD, they would be accounting for about 1/4 of AMD's sales in the PC market. That would almost certainly make Apple AMD's largest customer.
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No wonder AMD is having problems... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, *No wonder* AMD is having problems... they should NOT be making pickles, they should be making chips!
TDz.
No Matter What... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Matter What... (Score:4, Interesting)
1. They are no longer cost-effective in comparison to Core 2
2. Compatibility issues; athough the chipset I chose is not 100% supported on the kernel rev I'm running, it's still a far sight better than getting an ATI or NForce chipset to run acceptably well. Also, The AMD-ATI merger does not bode well for Linux users, given ATI's abysmal track record. I refuse to buy ATI products and am now avoiding AMD until I see whether or not ATI cleans up its act. (insert a rabid "fuck ATI" right about here)
3. at stock clock speeds, it is 80% faster (according to benchmarks) than the Pentium D I sometimes use at the office, and well over 100% faster than the Pentium 4 (the other box) my primary box at the office. At 3.06Ghz, it's (obviously) much faster than even that.
I wanted to go AMD, I really did, but with Intel's quad core processor coming out Real Soon Now and with my board's already being certified to run it, it was the logical choice. Quad core upgradability was the clincher.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Naively, since AMD, the larger company, bought ATI I would figure AMD's culture of openness would dominate. At least, I hope this is the case, because I'm sick of having only one choice for graphics cards (though I'm used to it; ever since 3dfx).
Anyway, it doesn't seem
History repeats itself (Score:4, Interesting)
AFAIK, this has always been AMDs problem: my earliest recollection is when they bought NexGen's K6 and sold it to Compaq in the sub-$1000 segment in 1995. Since then, anytime the get a good product, they blow it on production, leaving Intel to fill the void they created.
It is where they have failed again and again and again. I can't believe they haven't learned yet.
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It's a bit harsh to say that they blow it on production. You do realize how much it costs to construct cleanrooms, right? All while still being profitable and pour lots of money into R&D.
I think they are playing their cards to the best of their abilities.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
AMD hasn't had this problem before. (Score:3, Informative)
There's a difference between a production problem and a capacity problem, though they both result in supply failing to meet demand. A production problem is when you theoretically could manufacture enough parts to satisfy demand, but your process, technology, or chip design is flawed and is not reliable enough to meet production goals. This is especially bad when you tell your customers that
Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the dirty little secret about the semiconductor industry- success depends just as much on manufacturing ability as the features of the chip. Intel didn't just get their 300mm wafers and 65nm process overnight- they invested 10s of billions of dollars in manufacturing R&D. The result is they have unparalleled capacity and a huge technological lead over competitors with manufacturing technology. When a large OEM comes asking for 5 million units in the next quarter with a defect rate of less than 500 per million, there are very few companies that can deliver.
Re:Not new (Score:5, Interesting)
Fab 36 will be online soon with 300mm wafers and 65nm. Just going to 300mm wafers pretty much doubles capacity. Going to 65nm gets you another say 50% (anyone got a confirmed number). Getting FAB 36 and FAB 30 going doubles capacity again. So, by my calculations that is 2 x 2 x 1.5 or 6x cpacity increase for AMD in the next couple of months.
Did Intel switch to 65nm and 300mm sooner than AMD? Yes. Did they switch to copper and low-K dieelectric before AMD? No. Did their 90nm production even work quite right for Intel ever? Not sure. When the 90nm P4s used more power than their 130nm brethren you have to wonder.
Of course Intel has something like 6 processro FABs all over the world that are likely larger than AMDs. Doesn't take much R&D just to build more capacity especially when you are the 800lb gorilla.
Basically, Intel and AMD, at this time, are quality processor maufacturing operations. Intel tends to make technology switches before AMD, but they also get to deal with first adopter issues. And, when they both buy there equipment form the same semiconductor equipment manufacturers like Applied Materials, Novellus, and others. How much is AMD benefitting from Intel working out the bugs.
Parent
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I think Intel's 90nm process was working just fine such as it is. In my opinion the fact that the 90nm P4 burned more power than the 130nm P4 was due to two things:
First, the Prescott core that was released in 90nm had more pipe stages t
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Watch out for an Axe... (Score:3, Funny)
Science behind the miniaturization (Score:3, Interesting)
Moo (Score:3, Funny)
Q: Why did they call it a Pentium instead of 586.
A: When they booted up the first Pentium and added 100 to 486, it answered 585.32752365107239874
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New 65nm AMD fabs coming on line (Score:5, Informative)
AMD is converting Fab 30 in Dresden from 90um and 200mm wafers to Fab 38, with 65nm and 300mm wafers. This should come on line in 2007. Longer term, AMD is building a new fab in upstate New York [xbitlabs.com] for 32nm features on 300mm wafers. That should come on line in 2010.
Meanwhile, AMD's main fab, Fab 36 in Dresden, is starting to produce 65nm features on 200mm wafers [theinquirer.net]. AMD is also outsourcing some production to a 65nm fab in Singapore [reghardware.co.uk].
Down at the user level, this means that first shipments of AMD CPUs made with 65nm technology should appear in December of 2006. [reghardware.co.uk] Coming soon to Dell Dimension [fabtech.org] desktops.
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ehm... increase the price by 5% (Score:4, Insightful)
Are AMD processors more stable than Intel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A General Protection Fault is not a fault in the sense of a hardware flaw. It means that a process has attempted to access a segment for which it does not have the correct rights. Assuming correctly written software, the most likely cause of these is memory errors. If you are suffering from a lot of them, then I suggest you try switching to ECC RAM (or, at the very least, run memtest86 on the wor
Pricing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Does size matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is a problem, when you can't manufacture enough to meet demand.
Parent
Re:Does size matter? (Score:5, Informative)
First, you are correct. If you get more chips per wafer, you can make more chips. Since the time to process 1 wafer remains consant. However, there is also more going on.
The second thing to worry about is the cost. If it costs (making up numbers) $100 to process a wafer and you get 10 chips, it is $10 to manufacture 1 chip. If you get 20 chips from the wafer, then it only costs $5 to manufacture 1 chip.
The third item is quality control. If there are any flaws in the wafer, the chip that is created over that flaw can not be used. So that chip gets thrown out. If we can get more chips from a single wafer, our percentage yield increases as well. Imagine that there is 1 flaw per wafer. If we only get 1 chip per wafer our actual yield is 0%. This would be very bad. Now imagine we get 2 chips per wafer. While it is possible that the flaw would affect both chips, most likely it will only affect 1, giving a yield of 50%. If you get 3 chips, your yield is 66%. This yield really hits the bottom line.
If you are losing 2-3 chips per wafer from flaws, then any increase in the number of chips is going to increase your yield percentage. If you call it a 25% increase in chips on a wafer, due to the 65nm instead of 90nm process, the percentage of chips lost to flaws will also go down and you just made more money.
Parent
Re:Does size matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, a hexagonal die is a lot harder to design, and harder to cut out of the final wafer, than a square one. The second problem is probably solvable relatively cheaply. The first is not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It costs $X to make a wafer of CPU's. The more CPU's you get from that wafer, the cheaper each CPU costs. Large CPU Dies means fewer CPU's per wafer, thus high cost per wafer. Thus, each CPU die has a higher cost to manufacture than smaller dies.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The larger the die the lower the yield.
Taken to the extremes, assume a huge die. A single defect and you lose the entire wafer.
On a super tiny 100 dies/wafer a single defect only takes out 1%.
Of course on large dies, you might have small pieces of redundancy built in (all memory has this) so you can recover from some number of defects before you have to scrap it.
But still, the larger the die, the fewer you can make at a time and the lower the yield on the ones you do churn out.
Re:Does size matter? (Score:5, Informative)
2. Larger size = higher average chance of defect per die
3. Larger size = more expensive to manufacture per processor
So you see, size DOES matter :)
Parent
Re:Does size matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can work out AMD's yields by how they price their parts. The ones near the pricing sweet spots are likely to be the ones they get the biggest yields of.
Parent
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[putting on clownish AMD fanboy h
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Actually, for manufacturers, size matters in a big way.
Semiconductor manufacturing is, like with most manufacturing, an imperfect process. In general, for a given die (a die is one "chip" before it's placed in/on any kind of case) and a given manufacturing method there is going to be a manufacturing error rate that is measured in terms of errors per unit area.
These defects can stem from everything from a speck of dust getting into the system, all the way to a gas depositing process making a trace too th
Re:I for one... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
45nm in 2008
32nm in 2010
more generally:
0.7 * gate_length(N) in year(N) + 2
Thermal limits will hit hard in 10+ years. No exponential can go on forever.