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 .