AMD turns TSMC into a CPU manufacturing giant

[JumpingJack]

1. TSMC process technology is way ahead of AMD, launches faster and matures earlier. And, TSMC will not upgrade their tools for AMD specifically as AMD's volume is fairly small compare to other semiconductor giants such as Texas Instruments and Qualcomm.

2. AMD could make more as TSMC's quality control is top notch vs. big variances at AMD's own fab.

3. Mounting/stacking SOI and CMOS die isn't as easy a task as you would imagine.

Size does matter in the manufacturing business, and the only guys that could afford to charge forward and lead in manufacturing technologies are Intel, Samsung and TSMC. IBM/Hitachi could have patents but that's only paperwork. AMD? Nowhere on the map.

1. While TSMC can hit the shrink nodes a bit quicker, performance wise I recall TSMCs significantly poor performing (parametrically) than AMD's.

2. Not certain myself, I have not seen any company publish quality control data (i.e. yields).

3. This is an interesting proposition, at first thought -- just knee-jerk thoughts -- SOI would be somewhat difficult to implement in a 3D stacked arrangement simply because SOI requires fairly rapid thermal transfer to avoid self-heating problems.