Intel Corp (INTC)

[SemiconEng]

Overclockers.com Take on AMD's 2400+ Issues

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00135/

My Take:

Perhaps more importantly, look at the week on the chip. This chip was made week 39. That means the last week of September. We are now in week 40. These chips were rushed, and I mean rushed out. I don't recall there ever being so little gap between week of manufacture and week of sale.

--- That means that the chip went through Wafersort (Die Functionality Testing As a Whole Wafer), Assembly, Final Test (Bin/Speed Testing as a Packaged Part), Burn In, and Post Burn In Test, in less than 1 week (let's not forget shipping time). This should normally take 2-3 weeks. My guess would be that they skipped the burn-in alltogether, If they did that, and held the testing tools open and unused, and hand carried the wafers all the way through, they might have been able to meet the 1 week timeframe. I wouldn't bet my life on the reliability of that part though.

Where Are The Rest?
Look at the facts:

AMD said the last Palomino start was in late June.
--During the summer, the 2200+ was hardly available, only recently have a lot of places been selling them.
--Due to the delays, AMD has acknowledged serious problems with the TBreds that required redesign and structural modifications.
--Very few resellers have offered to even pre-sell either the 2400+ or 2600+.
--They're going to OEMs? Then where are the OEM systems for sale? Neither Gateway, Compaq nor HP are currently selling such systems.
--Per the "new" vaporous Athlons, look here and you have an AMD salesperson telling an OEM making high-end CAD machines that the XP2800+ is going to have a "very limited production run" which has been sold out, so go away and we'll tell you when Barton is ready.

---Shades of intel's CuMine Fiasco?? It's pretty clear that Elmer, and the others that were saying that AMD had sacrificed their 0.13u gate width at 0.18u were true after all. The lack of availability of parts from a Vendor with < 20% market share COULD be explained away, IF..... a person had their head in the sand, but otherwise, the data seems to speak for itself. If AMD could make them, they'de be available.

This is a company that can tell customers, especially the kind of high-end customers they're trying to get through their AMDMe ad campaign "Go away, we don't need your money?"
Does that make ANY sense to you?

--- Not much to say here.........

I could easily be wrong on the whys, but something seems to be going terribly wrong in Dresden based on what's not coming out of there.
This piece may look very foolish two or three weeks from now. Personally, I hope it does.
But what if it doesn't two, three, four weeks from now?
Ed

---No Ed, You're not going to look foolish. Hope is a great thing, I hope I win the lottery, and marry Michelle Kwan (Love those skater outfits), but I doubt those things will happen........ Either.



Semi