Intel's New Factory to Make 450mm Chip Wafers
Mmm, big crispy wafers.
Intel is building a new fab facility in Hillsboro, Oregon to handle 450mm wafers. According to the EETimes, the chipmaker is also going to upgrade current U.S. facilities for 22-nm production at a total investment of between $6 billion and $8 billion.
The new fab in Oregon will be known as D1X and will begin its R&D in 2013.
"Intel is very interested in 450mm… D1X is being (constructed) to be compatible with 450mm," said Intel's director of process architecture and integration, Mark Bohr, adding that equipment vendors are now interested in making 450mm tools.
Larger wafers mean that there will be a greater number of chips produced per cycle, which generally means a reduced cost on the producer that translates to lower prices for the consumer. (The same sort of principle occurs during a process shrink, where more chips can fit on a single wafer.)
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- 450mm
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"Larger wafers mean that there will be a greater number of chips produced per cycle, which generally means a reduced cost on the producer that Should translate to lower prices for the consumer(but never seems to in the real world). (The same sort of principle occurs during a process shrink, where more chips can fit on a single wafer.)"
Fixed it for you.
Mactronix
"Larger wafers mean that there will be a greater number of chips produced per cycle, which generally means a reduced cost on the producer that Should translate to lower prices for the consumer(but never seems to in the real world). (The same sort of principle occurs during a process shrink, where more chips can fit on a single wafer.)" Fixed it for you. Mactronix
Actually, it does. Performance per dollar keeps going up each generation. An i5-750 for example vastly outperforms far more expensive Core2Quad era chips, yet costs less or as much as those old guys.
Prices don't go down, but performance goes up. If you are content with previous gen performance, than you can buy a cheaper current gen CPU too. So prices do go down.
I thinks he meant that it prices go down for the manufacturer, but not for the consumer in this special case. Currently Intel could perfectly have lower prices than AMD for the die size of their chips, but they won't. So it's manufacturer's choice to lower the prices.
I thinks he meant that it prices go down for the manufacturer, but not for the consumer in this special case. Currently Intel could perfectly have lower prices than AMD for the die size of their chips, but they won't. So it's manufacturer's choice to lower the prices.
Spot on my friend, lower manufacturing costs don't mean anything to the consumer. Hardware is sold on performance. While the abilities of hardware keeps going up the die size going down wont make any difference to the price we pay for it.