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AMD to ship chips based on 90-nanometer tech

Hoping to catch up with Intel and IBM in an advanced chip-making technology, the California-based semiconductor maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) planned to announce yesterday that it has begun to ship chips based on an advanced manufacturing process that is being used to build the next generation of processors.

AMD is trailing those two rivals in making the shift to the new 90-nanometer manufacturing process, which makes it possible to put more transistors on a single chip or shrink the size of existing chips, effectively increasing performance while lowering prices.

But industry analysts gave AMD high marks for its recent manufacturing and design advances.

Both Intel and IBM have stumbled during the transition to the 90-nanometer process, struggling with performance, heat and manufacturing issues.

Although AMD is about nine months behind Intel in making the switch, the company has not lost significant ground, according to several industry analysts. Moreover, AMD surprised Intel with the success of its shift to 64-bit chips, forcing Intel, the market leader, to shift its strategy.

Intel had been betting that it could break the chip market into two incompatible segments, one for 32-bit designs and one for 64-bit designs. Intel's Itanium microprocessor, which is a 64-bit design, has not been widely adopted and Intel recently announced a new 64-bit microprocessor that is compatible with its X86 designs, and which largely copies AMD's 64-bit chip.

Making the shift to the 90-nanometer manufacturing process has been a significant struggle for semiconductor companies. It effectively doubles the manufacturing capacity of the industry, but entails enormous technical challenges because some components of the new chips are no more than five to seven molecules thick.

Typically, each generation of chips is defined by the size of the smallest feature that can be fabricated on the chips, which now have as many as a half billion transistors.

Industry analysts said that AMD would first use the new technology to lower costs by effectively doubling the number of chips that can be made from a single silicon wafer.

They warned, however, that the shift to the new process, which can lower costs while increasing performance and reducing heat, had to be smooth if AMD was to stay in the processor race.

AMD said that the first chip being manufactured using its 90-nanometer process is a version of its Mobile Athlon 64 processor.
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