Intel Beating AMD in the Race to 65nm Process - My Fabs are Bigger Than Yours
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Intel already has 5 Fabs which use 300nm wafers. Just a couple weeks ago, the company reopened Fab 12. It’s in Chandler AZ, and its ready to start manufacturing 65nm processors. This is the second Fab Intel has that can produce the new and smaller chip designs. The first was Fab D1D. In a press release, Intel says:
The Fab 12 conversion project, which began in 2004 and cost roughly $2 billion, was completed in approximately 18 months. Fab 12 is Intel’s fifth fab using 300mm wafers.
Clearly, Intel is already far ahead of AMD in preparedness to manufacture on a 65nm design. The two companies’ product plans obviously reflect this. Intel hopes to being mass production of its first 65nm processor, Yonah, at the end of this year. Yonah is the next in the line of Intel’s Pentium M chips. The better efficiency of those chips will be an easy sell in the mobile market.
Intel will ramp up 65nm production through 2006, as more chips are released. The high-performance, dual-core, 90nm Smithfield processor will be replaced by the 65nm Presler. Product plans expect this shift at the beginning of 2006. Besides the obvious change, Presler will improve on the previous design by doubling the cache of each core and pulling the two cores apart on the die. Intel will also replace their Prescott with the Cedar Mill. The Cedar Mill will also roll out in the first half of 2006, and it will be in wide scale production later in the year.
Things don’t look so good for AMD. All of their Fabs are set to produce 90nm processors, and that probably won’t change for at least a year. Estimates place AMD anywhere from a year to a year-and-a-half behind Intel. The earliest AMD is expected to ship these CPUs is late 2006. The 65nm processors probably won’t make up a large portion of their production until at least the second half of 2007.
So, for at least a year, Intel’s 65nm chips will be competing against AMD’s 90nm ones. This could put AMD at a loss, if there is enough performance improvement when going smaller. Then again, AMD CPUs already have a reputation for being cooler and more power efficient than Intel’s, as well as being ahead in 64-bit processing. Will Intel give AMD a good run for their money?
Next: The 65nm Benchmarks and Overclocks >>
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