Intel Corp (INTC)

[Elmer Phud]

wbmw -

Intel has done major demos on A-0 silicon. They did their 2001 IDF presentation on Willamette first silicon and they have done demos of Merced only 3 weeks after first silicon. If I recall clearly they also demoed a 4-way McKinley system very early as well. The point being that demos can be done on silicon several steppings at the very least away from production worthy.

If the current silicon is healthy enough to have had demonstrations run at multiple trade shows, and even healthy enough to have had benchmark run from several enthusiast websites, then it sure as hell wouldn't have so many bugs as to require the disabling of major features.

I guess it depends on what you think is major. Clearly demos can be done on silicon quite a ways away from being ready. And demos don't tell you if the process is ready. They could have gone through a lot of wafers to get samples and those wafers would have been nursed by their process engineers. That's a far cry from production.

Whatever AMDroid fantasy has Hammer production silicon getting major performance improvements over the current samples, has got to be one of the more desperate and optimistic notions I have yet heard.

That won't stop them from announcing major improvements...

EP