Replies to post #78514 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[chipguy]

To run Task Manager means they booted Windows. To boot Windows means everything, with the possible exceptions of floating point and virtualization, is working. So try again.


Think thermals, think on-chip noise, and think circuit
marginalities. Task manager consumes next to no
CPU activity. Perfect for silicon that is nearly fully
bug-free from a logic design perspective but could
still be very ill from a circuit and/or physical design
perspective. Put even a little stress on it for a few
minutes and it may fall over.

[wbmw]

Re: To run Task Manager means they booted Windows. To boot Windows means everything, with the possible exceptions of floating point and virtualization, is working. So try again.

You have got to be kidding. Or ignorant of the validation process, I'm not sure which.

It doesn't take much at all to boot Windows. This is considered a pre-requisit before actual validation even begins. Try multi-core and multi-socket concurrency with fully loaded memory and I/O running billions of patterns for days on end. And that's just logic verification. Then you have to test all the circuits, heat and thermals, speed paths, marginality, fast/slow corners, etc. I guess you have no idea.

I guess a better demo would involve some server type application, like Java or Web server, or even SAP. Even running a simple Monte Carlo analysis would have been something. Task Manager tells you bumpkiss.

[mmoy]

It depends what version of Windows they booted.

If they booted a full version of Windows Home or XP, quite a bit of stuff is tested as Windows comes with quite a bit of crap these days. There would be bursts of pretty high CPU activity too.

If they only booted safe mode, then that's much less testing.

I'd guess that there wouldn't be that much SIMD testing on Windows XP booting up too.

[Windsock]

To run Task Manager means they booted Windows.

Not correct. It means that Task Manager was running and that is all. The system could have been jury rigged so that it would run Task Manager and generate the inference that it could boot and run Windows.

Deception has always been AMD's game and you have to carefully parse what AMD actually presents. For example, AMD once touted an increase in "desktop market share". A close reading of the claim showed that the metric was an increase in retail desktop share.

The retail limitation was real cute because it excluded online and business desktop sales. A check of total desktop sales by the sours sited by AMD showed that AMD had not gained market share.