The Core 2 Duo processors (E6700 and E6600), for example, flatten the trendline for Intel and are priced more than $100 below Intel's exponential curve. When including Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX6700 in the curve - we are using an expected retail price of $1200 for this model, the blue performance curve is slightly flattened, while AMD's current prices receive more pressure....

After that, an etching process using various chemicals (hydrofluoric acid, acetic acid, nitric acid) is used to flatten the surface by another 50 µm. The last step is a polishing process, which flattens the surface to height variants of as little as 3 nm....

With the slower L2 cache speed of the 900MHz platform the Athlon's performance should start to flatten with certain applications....

However, you can see that the slower cache speed of the 900MHz Athlon causes the slope between 800 and 900MHz to flatten out....

And this is before they enable the XR (eXtended Range) technology which promises to flatten and extend the throughput vs. range curve even further for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. ...