3DFX Message Board - Msg: 13568361

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To: Plaz who wrote (16298)	5/4/2000 12:48:00 PM
From: Jeffrey P	Read Replies (1) of 16960

Also, at .18u nvidia will get more dice/wafer than .25e, so once the costs and yields stabilize a bit on the .18u cutting edge process it should have more room to come down in price than the VSA-100. Thoughts? I was under the impression that was one of the main reasons why 3dfx was pushing for the .25e process. There is more .25 fab space available and even when the .18 process stabilizes regarding price, the .25 process will still be a cheaper solution. So at .25 3dfx is using a mature and stable / high yield process while Nvidia is using the .18 process which (it is my understanding, and PLEASE correct if I am wrong, this is definately not an expert in this area) which yields more chips per wafer but not necessarily more usable chips and is not as efficient a process regarding the percentage of usable chips (does that make sense?). The way I see it is 3dfx is trying to squeeze the max profit out of this chip. I'll leave tearing this post apart to those who are better informed. But this is my understanding. Jeff