[Info-vax] OpenVMS at Intel

[John Wallace]

On Aug 3, 6:50 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> Mike Rechtman wrote:
> > At least some of the Intel fabs in Israel still use VMS to my certain knowledge.
> > The company that cares for them is an offshoot of Intel, called (IIRC) Numonyx,
> > but I don't know thw exact relationship with the parent company.
>
> It is my impression that once a FAB has been built, it is likely to
> retain its equipment and control systems for a very long time, until
> they either abandon it, or retool it to build using even smaller process.
>
> The question then becomes: when Intel announces that the next 8086 will
> dump the 45 micron and go to 30 micron (or whatever), how much physical
> changes do they need to do inside the FAB with regards to equipment ?
>
> Do they setup a new FAB for this (perhaps inside the same building), at
> which point, the older assembly line can be used to make older chips
> like Itanium and memory an flash and whatever ?
>
> Or do they upgrade the current production line to handle the smaller
> masks, and us that better line to make the older chips as well ?

Those questions are important to Intel, but not directly important to
VMS.

What is important to VMS in Intel (and other) fabs is the one-time
industry-default fab-management app, Workstream. Now it's a long time
since I followed this subject at all closely, but afaik there was a
"modern" successor to Workstream from the same people (who afaik now
call themselves Applied Materials). The successor was called FAB300
because it was intended to be the "go to" product for folks building
300mm-wafer fabs. (300mmm fabs go back to the early 2000s). Afaik
FAB300 wasn't VMS-based, which is likely to be a bit of a shame for
various reasons; primarily because when you're spending the money a
leading-edge fab costs, running it on a "cheap" computer system to
save a few hundred thousand dollars here and there seems like false
economy. But if that's the way the business managers want to play it,
and a lot of them do these days...