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Charter nm
On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 09:03:08 -0600, Ed wrote:
I went to Charters site and was looking at a financial statement for Q3 2006, they break info down for their 5 fabs and I found this interesting. 9% of their revenue comes from 350nm or LARGER !! 15% is from 250nm to 350nm 13% is from 180nm to 250nm 1% is 150nm to 180nm 25% is 130nm to 150nm 29% is 90nm and below So it appears the larger sizes are still in use for a lot of different semiconductors, but i was really surprised to see larger then 350nm !! This actually shouldn't be all that surprising, keeping in mind the nature of Chartered's business. First off, a lot of chips really don't require anything more advanced than 350nm. Plenty of ASICs run at low clock speeds and don't have any power restrictions that are too stringent. As such, they can be built on damn near any manufacturing process, so why shouldn't Chartered make use of equipment they already have? Often one of the main reasons why a contract IC maker like Chartered will switch to a more advanced process is NOT for performance (like what AMD and Intel are after) but rather so that they can cram more dies on a given silicon wafer. Generally speaking the more advanced processes SHOULD be cheaper in the long run, but they have to balance that off with the cost of buying new equipment, ramping up production and especially validating everything once it's all working. This is a VERY expensive proposition, and sometimes it is simply not worth it for a given manufacturing run. If the volume is only being measured in hundreds of thousands rather than millions, than it's probably easier for Chartered to ONLY validate it on a single manufacturing process. The other thing to keep in mind is that these chips are being produced under a contract. Some of these contracts will specifically state that EVERY chip will be 100% exactly the same for the entire life of the product. If a company is building a product with a 10-year life cycle, they will probably want chips produced today to be exactly the same as the very first chip that was produced 10 years ago. Remember, a LOT of what Chartered makes will probably NEVER see the inside of anything that we might call a "computer". PCs, servers, workstations and whatnot might get a lot of both press AND revenue from IC production, but they definitely do not get the volume. Only a small percentage of the world's ICs show up in what we would normally call a "computer". ---------------------------- Tony Hill hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca |
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