AMD shows 45 nanometre wafer from Dresden

[Apokalipse]

Fab 36 does 45nm litho
By Theo Valich: Thursday 10 May 2007, 09:41
AMD HAS ROLLED OUT its Manufacturing Update Tour, something that the company likes to do in springtime. This time around, AMD gathered selective bunch of hacks and showed off a lot of interesting things, including products that are hitting the market or getting anounced next week. Most interesting was the fact that company was showing of a 45nm wafer to the crowd. Unlike last year's one, that was actually manufactured in IBM's Fab in East Fishkill and featured nothing more than SRAM cells and various sort of trannies, this time real, 45nm, "Made in Germany" parts were shown to carefully selected audience.
Sadly, we won't bring you a picture of the wafer in this news article, since we did not attend this NDAed briefing.
AMD is sticking to the story that it will introduce 45nm parts during the middle of 2008. µ

Yes, AMD are definitely on track.

 

[turtile]

Do you think AMD has put most of its resources into 45nm development (since 65nm hasn't seen much improvement)?

They should have just skipped right to 45nm.

 

[Apokalipse]

Do you think AMD has put most of its resources into 45nm development (since 65nm hasn't seen much improvement)?

No. AMD has put far more resources into R&D for the architectural design of the CPU's.

They should have just skipped right to 45nm.

Not really. It wouldn't have gotten them the high yields they are really after. Plus, it probably would have cost them more than it should.

The transition to lower die sizes does not really give an immediate benefit. More of a gradual one, as the CPU's evolve to take advantage of the die shrinks later on.

If they had went to 45nm and skipped 65nm, it really wouldn't have done much, if anything for K8.

Here's a youtube video explaining how AMD sees die shrinks, and yields:
YouTube - Myth vs Reality: AMD on track in 65nm transition, more...