As anyone who follows the Semiconductor Business knows, AMD and Intel have been locked in a battle for control of the Microprocessor maket for many years. Just a few years ago AMD was on the upswing with superior product designs and performance and increasing market share. In recent years Intel's Core architecture has regained the design and performance lead for Intel. The Core architecture coupled with Intel's much larger market share and financial and manufacturing might has put AMD on the defensive and now reached the point where AMD's survival is in question.
At IC Knowledge we are the industry leader in IC Cost Modeling and we thought it would be interesting to compare AMD and Intel's manufacturing costs. The following discussion is based on the two companies respective 65nm processes. Although Intel is currently ramping 45nm and AMD is working on 45nm - 65nm remains the mainstream process.
AMD uses a process based on technology developed in concert with IBM. The AMD process starts out with an SOI wafer, includes dual gate oxides, has embedded silicon germanium, dual stress liners and stress memorization for strain engineering and 10 layers of copper metalization for interconnect. Intel's process starts out with a much less expensive Epi wafer, has a single gate oxide thickness, embbeded silicon germanium and a tensile stress layer for strain engineering and 8 layers of copper metalization for interconnect. We estimate that the Intel process requires 31 mask layers and the AMD process requires 42 mask layers.
There are significant differences in cost due to the differences in starting substarte and process complexity. The AMD starting SOI wafers has a cost 3.6 times the cost of an Epi wafer and the finished wafer cost for AMD at approximately $4,320 is 1.7 times the cost for a finished Intel wafer at approximately $2,500. Intel also has a die size advantage at 81% of the size of the AMD die, resulting in a tested die cost for AMD over 1.8 times the cost of a tested Intel die. No wonder Intel has high gross margins while AMD is losing money.
AMD's partnership with IBM gives AMD access to state-of-the-art process technology without having to pay for the entire development costs themselves, unfortunately IBM's technologies tend to be very complex. In order to succeed in the market with resonable margins AMD needs to find a way to take the technology and implement it in a simpler manner.
This article is based on calculations made using the IC Knowledge - 2008 IC Cost Model. The 2008 IC Cost Model supports calculations at process nodes down to 45nm based on announced processes and has forecasted processes down to 22nm. To learn more about the model please go to the IC Cost Model page.
