AMD strictly moderated (AMD)

[pgerassi]

Wbmw:

Were you ever in a R&D lab in a semiconductor company? In any R&D lab at any company? Given your responses, the answer must be a resounding NO!

Prototypes are not made on production machines. They are done by hand. First they had to take a bunch of Woodcrests and pick the few that worked. That's a tiny fraction of all the dice on those 20 wafers . Then of those, they had to find those that would run with three loads on the FSB. Of those, they had to find the ones that ran within a given power budget. Then to sort them by clock speed at that power level. By then you are down to just 20-40 Woodcrest dies.

Then you make a custom run of substrates usually by hand. There is no production line as we are far from that stage. Then we laboriously test each substrate to make sure that it is good. After you get twenty good ones, you place by hand the components onto those substrates. Then you test each MCM to see if it works. A twenty percent success ratio isn't that bad when you build a 100 item MCM. Now we have four working MCMs that we can use for prototyping the MBs. We pick the MCMs that work and show it to our bosses.

Its a statement of how desperate Intel is, that they demonstarted a prototype, when only 4 are known to be somewhat working. The demonstration can gloss over the numerous bugs by various means. Its normal for a dozen prototypes to be working before it is shown to privately to corporate insiders. Typically hundreds are made before it is shown privately to outsiders. A sample production line is made by the time it is shown publically. At least that is how Intel used to do it long ago.

All this demo did was show how deeply in trouble Intel must think it is. Contrast that with AMD and Socket AM2 CPUs. There are hundreds of engineering samples at AMD's customers and partners and not one has been publically demonstrated. That will change in about a month and they will likely show up in a quarter after that.

Remember that many here state that it takes a year for server testing of samples and QC NGA isn't even to sampling stage yet. This just shows that they are at least 15 months away from a real launch, probably longer. If you are not beside yourself with worry, Intel just told you that you should.

Pete