Joining Forces To Fight Intel's Fab Fabs

Intel Corp. is the 800- if not 8,000-pound gorilla of cutting-edge CPU manufacturing, but AMD and IBM are teaming up to keep a few bananas for themselves: The two companies, already (like Intel) working to move their chips from 0.13-micron to 90-nanometer (0.09-micron) process manufacturing, have agreed to jointly develop technologies for making 65-nanometer products scheduled to appear in 2005.

Both the 65- and later 45-nanometer process technologies will be used with 300mm silicon wafers instead of the 200mm discs common in today's chip-making. Advanced structures and materials such as high-speed silicon-on-insulator (SOI) transistors, copper interconnects, and low-k dielectric insulation will improve the resulting processors' performance and reduce their power consumption.

IBM and AMD engineers will work together in IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill, N.Y. Each partner will be able to use the resulting technologies to manufacture products in its own fabrication facilities and in conjunction with selected manufacturing partners, promising lower development costs and faster time to market.