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AMD’s Fab 30 in Dresden» —>
Introduction
It is done, Thunderbird is here now. Its presentation was almost at the same time both at the Computex in Taipei and in AMD’s new production facility in Dresden. The full review of the new Athlon has already been posted on Monday. Today, we will introduce their new complex and also give you some background information.
Everybody knew that both new AMD processors, Athlon and Duron, are based on the same Athlon type core. That’s why most of us assumed that both CPUs should be released on June 5. In spite of the fact that they are already shipping Duron CPUs in quantities, AMD did not officially announce this processor.
In my opinion, the Duron is no less interesting than the new Athlon processor, as the only difference is the smaller cache size of 64 instead of 256 KBytes. Although the L2 cache size may be very small, we expect the Duron to be almost as fast as the old Athlon processor. Even more important will be the price/performance ratio, as the Duron 600 will initially only cost $112. That is the best proof that the old Athlon will disappear quite soon. AMD wants the transition from Slot A to Socket A to pass off as fast as possible, which underlines our forecast.
AMD’s Fab 30 in Dresden
Dr. Kurt Biedenkopf, Prime Minister of Saxony, Germany, knows how to attract high tech companies, as there is also a large facility from Infineon in the vicinity (which is being expanded right now). When approaching the AMD area, you can spot the huge buildings quite early, as everything has been dimensioned very generously — something I can assure you is not typical for Germany!
Some of you may wonder why AMD went to Dresden in Saxony (former Eastern Germany). There is a long tradition in the semiconductor sector there, as Dresden had been the center of the semiconductor industry for the whole Eastern Block. After German Unification, most companies had to be closed due to the break down of their market and lots of highly skilled workers lost their job over night. In the mid 90s, a rebirth of this high tech industry was slowly setting in.
There were some rumours that AMD was giving certain tax privileges. But in truth, Saxony gave a subsidy of approximately $400 million to the total investment of $1.9 billion — without any special taxing model. This investment could be reimbursed some day, as companies like AMD or Infineon will most likely attract other high tech businesses.
AMD Dresden is currently employing more than 1,100 people, most of them (almost 90%) from Saxony. At the moment, AMD is hiring about 40 to 50 new employees every month.
Thanks to the highly skilled workforce in Dresden, the Fab 30 could be put on stream without moving a large technical staff from Austin or Sunnyvale to Dresden. AMD is also employing students from German universities. We were also quite surprised to see that approximately one quarter of the new employees were unemployed before. It’s great to see that AMD’s culture, which is very much team-orientated (people as the most important asset) and non-hierarchical, seems to work perfectly in Dresden.
Incredibly Fast Ramp-Up
The construction work took just only over a year (1997 to 1998). In early 1999, AMD was able to show the first working K6-III samples from Dresden (using copper interconnects). Not only is this fast progress quite impressive, but according to Dr. Hans Deppe, Director of Operations, the yields in Dresden are even better than in Fab 25 in Austin, Texas. Such an exceptional result is usually not achieved in only one year.
Three factors may explain these advances in the manufacturing process. First, there has been a technology alliance between AMD and Motorola, which primarily has been formed to develop copper technology. A lot of research and development work was already done in Austin, so that the Dresden Fab 30 is not benefiting from it. Second, the Fab 30 is equipped with the latest tool sets for microprocessor production. Last but not least, the excellent Dresden workforce is contributing a lot to AMD’s advances.
Fab 25 and Fab 30 — Both Big, but Different
The second AMD production facility, Fab 25, is situated in Austin, Texas. It used to produce all AMD processors for years now. Only some moths ago, this facility was upgraded from 0.25 to 0.18 micron. Today, AMD is able to produce all types of Thunderbird or Spitfire CPUs there in 0.18 micron aluminium process. Currently, there are no plans to change the production process of Fab 25 to copper as well, as the costs for this kind up upgrade would simply be far too high. The Texan factory is working at 100% production capacity, performing more than 5000 wafer starts each week. It’s very difficult to say, how many working processors they get out of one wafer, but this kind of information will most likely never be available, as it would be the key to calculating the precise maximum production volume.
Dresden is running at appxoximately 1000 to 1500 wafer starts each week, which is about 25% of the maximum output capacity. Everybody there is confident that AMD will be able to run at 50% at the end of 2000. A high target, but considering the current advances, it is very likely that they will achieve it.
The Production
Due to the persistent boom for semiconductor products, it has become very difficult to get all tool sets quickly. Some devices have delivery times of more than a year. Even if you can get everything faster, it is still very difficult to speed up the chip production radiply, as the yield will most likely be afflicted with it. As a matter of fact, the yield is one of the most important issues. Did you know that the production of an Athlon die takes eight weeks? Each wafer has to undergo 500 single production steps, before the dies will be finished. But afterwards, you still don’t have the final processor, as it still has to be packaged and bonded. The final assembly is not done in Dresden or in Austin, but in another facility situated in Malaysia. The Athlon for Socket A is just called PGA (Pin Grid Array), whilst the accurate term would be FC-CPGA (Flip-Chip Ceramic Pin Grid Array, as AMD makes use of a ceramic substrate). Intel however insists on the long-winded term FC-PGA for their Pentium III and Celeron processors.
According to statements at the press conference in Dresden, all speed grades of the new Athlon processor will be produced both in Fab 25 and in Fab 30 without giving the user a way to distinguish between the copper and the aluminium version. But it should be possible just to see the difference. As Tom published in the review of the Thunderbird, the aluminium version shines bluish, whereas copper Athlons have a green die surface. You can see both versions here.
This year’s targets
As soon as both megafabs are working at 100% capacity, AMD will be able to supply 30% of the global demand for microprocessors. That’s exactly what AMD is planning to do as soon as possible. The new Fab 30 is meant to have 1400 people working there at the end of 2000. There will even be 1800 people employed one year later. Thanks to those copper interconnects, AMD should be able to rise clock speeds for future processors at least as fast as Intel. This year is going to stay hot, because Intel’s Willamette processor is supposed to become available in the fall at initial clock speeds of 1.4 GHz.
Conclusion
Having such a production facility at their disposal, AMD is in a better position than ever before. The yield is quite impressive so far, and thanks to one of the most advanced material analysis labs, AMD is able to eliminate errors during the chip production really quickly.
As you can read in the new Athlon review, the new Thunderbird core is able to bring the AMD CPU back to the very top.
The presentation of the new Athlon processor included some benchmark graphics, which partially did not start at 0. AMD obviously wanted to emphasize some benchmark results to make the Athlon look better in their comparisons against the Pentium III. As AMD certainly does not in need to make use of such cheap marketing tricks, I don’t know why they still did it. After all, the new Athlon is a very competitive processor which does not neet to hide from any other CPU available.
I was a bit disappointed as the Duron was left out almost completely. Everything would be fine if AMD wasn’t already shipping this new CPU as well. In consideration of its origin, the Duron will likely be able to blow away the Celeron, which is of course its main enemy. Stay tuned for our first Duron review! This summer is going to be quite hot indeed, don’t you think?
