Digit-Life has posted their April´2001 hardware digest

Probably, Intel´s start of the first 0.13-micron factory with the usage of 300 mm slices (D1C in Hillsboro, Oregon) has become the most important event of this month. The results are quite positive: total saving in chip production makes about 30 %, i.e. the cost price of new processors will be lower by one third approximately. Frankly speaking, there´s only one such factory, so no transition to 0.13-micron technology (i.e. when the 0.13-micron processor production exceeds the 0.18 micron processor production) has been planned this year. The Tualatin production starts this quarter and the Pentium 4 production starts closer to the fourth quarter.

Well, the expenditure grows and the income is not that good. According to Intel, its warehouses are overstocked, and the announced quarter results have appeared to be 16 % worse than the last year. The general market situation is blamed, but, probably, AMD´s influence is also present in this situation as, by some ratings, it won about 4 % of the processor market over Intel in the last quarter.

Read more