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AMD's 45nm technology on show
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 5th March 2008
AMD's new 45nm quad-core Phenoms on a wafer.
The 45nm process is a joint venture between AMD and IBM and uses immersed EUV – extreme ultra violet lithography. This type of lithography amplifies the lens like an eye to make even smaller processes possible, but it does have its problems. AMD was keen to cite its “full field” lithography, where it designed the manufacturing process to be a “Gate First” approach which works better with current tooling and is the most efficient manner to AMD’s style of CPU manufacture.
Just down the road from us in Dresden, Fab 36 is currently making all the Barcelonas and Shanghais at a rate of 24,000 300mm wafers per month. Fab 30, on the other hand, is currently in the process of being converted to use 300mm wafers and run the EUV process for future 45nm chips.
AMD also promised at least two speed increments from the current Phenom range, the first comes in addition to Tri-core Phenoms within a few weeks. AMD bamboozled the watching audience with overzealous marketing terms for the early parts – citing platform initiatives as part of a central role it believes will leads to greater energy efficiency and performance on a platform level.
This is in stark contrast to what some of its partners told us earlier in the day – the component manufacturers were keen to see diversity so they could sell with anyone, not just “Spider”. Unfortunately this diversity also currently means, Intel CPUs.
Newer platforms like “Cartwheel” (OEM platform) and “Perseus” were left deliberately vague and a lot of ambiguous 2008 buzzwords were thrown about, but no hardware specs were revealed. “Hardcastle” for example was shown as a solution offering “Industry-leading longevity and stability, essential security, manageability and essential performance.”
While we’ve already seen Centrino 2 from Intel, AMD’s Puma platform and new Griffin processor, branded Turion Ultra X2, will arrive by the end of Q2 – the same time Intel’s platform launches so it should finally make for a diverse quarter in the notebook area. There was no information about what process Griffin was being made on, what frequencies it would arrive in or how good it was – again, details were left out.
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Comments (22)
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we will see, we will see...
I mean K10 once sounded promising too, like several years ago, before the multiyear delay, the reduction of clockspeeds, the lack of avalaiblity of the server parts and the various bugs, so I wont even get the slightest bit excited until the product is in retail and there are mutliple reviews of retail parts around.
its too bad that this shift to 45nm wont bring a architecture revision and increase the efficiency of phenoms more than the usual shift to smaller manufacturing processes.
I wasn't yesterday - their press conference was BS, but after a refreshing no-BS chat with some top guys at AMD this evening, I'm hoping they hit their targets to make an interesting Q3/4 onwards for everyone.
well... Seeing is believing.
Anybody know the name of this vixen? She's hot...
Absolutely, I totally agree.
I had another, more private meeting today with some senior people at AMD and while quietly confident they said the whole reason why they've said "2H" is to not give dates because they don't want to lead people down the wrong path. Im hoping because I want to see some competition, that's all. We need AMD.
Very true, plus on a whole I like there platform philosophy. Sure spider may have gotten off to the worst possible start but assuming they can pull a decent Phenom out of the bag now that they have proven they can make competitive chipsets along with good, cheap graphics I'm looking forward to the AMD future.
Still as I really need a new rig in the next month or so it may well have to be Intel based.
the new AMD chipsets and boards look awesome
bloody phenom pulls the whole thing down and im now looking at x38/x48 + yorkfield instead :(
big shame, really hope 45nm phenoms let them scale up to proper clock speeds and do it soon
Leslie Sobon, AMD's director of product & brand management, desktop division - atleast in May 2007.
So this is who we blame for FASN8 first being announced... and then scrapped? (bit-tech's missing a devil smilie)
And, uh, she's too hot to pin the blame on.
She might give me a stiffy by just looking at her photo.
Hang on, give me a minute.
Just you...
LOL.
Ark - not necessarily. AMD was keen to highlight that while it doesn't make big jumps like Intel does it does progressively tune their processes - so "later" Phenoms will have a 65nm process with the techniques used that are closer to the 45nm process.
but I want AMD to pull though, just to have some competition with Intel (cheap prices)