What's coming for us at 45nm

[Bill Davidsen]

In article <MPG.19564fe5b2cd152798a471@enews.newsguy.com>,
Keith R. Williams <krw@attglobal.net> wrote:

| Let's just say that only bleeding-edge fabs that produce chips
| with _large_ unit volumes can be economically be built. One can
| do high value chips with smaller volume in such fabs. Indeed
| someone has to pay the light bill. ;-)

Someone made a case a few years ago that bleeding edge works only for
CPUs, because they will sell even at a high price, and memory, because
you can make a lot of chips of really small size.

I won't try to recreate the arguments, but they seemed valid.
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates
As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and
this we should do freely and generously.
-Benjamin Franklin (who would have liked open source)

[Keith R. Williams]

In article <nf2Ka.809$BD4.793@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>,
davidsen@tmr.com says... In article <MPG.19564fe5b2cd152798a471@enews.newsguy.com>, Keith R. Williams <krw@attglobal.net> wrote: | Let's just say that only bleeding-edge fabs that produce chips | with _large_ unit volumes can be economically be built. One can | do high value chips with smaller volume in such fabs. Indeed | someone has to pay the light bill. ;-) Someone made a case a few years ago that bleeding edge works only for CPUs, because they will sell even at a high price, and memory, because you can make a lot of chips of really small size. I won't try to recreate the arguments, but they seemed valid.

Perhaps this was true in the ancient times. Have you noticed the
profit on commodity DRAM lately? ...I rest my case!

--
Keith