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Learning about how they product bin CPUs blew my mind years ago. iirc, the CPUs come off the same manufacturing line--but the ones they sold as 3.2ghz vs 3.4gh
by metamet 3y ago
Learning about how they product bin CPUs blew my mind years ago.
iirc, the CPUs come off the same manufacturing line--but the ones they sold as 3.2ghz vs 3.4ghz were based on stability tests. It was the same chip, just that some came out the oven better than others. So they would cap it and slap a label on it, which is why overclocking is feasible but inconsistent.
- quesera 3y agoThis is also common a common practice with garments, bakery items, fruit, racehorses, and children.
- Vanclief 3y agoWait, children?
- james_in_the_uk 3y agoShould be an XKCD comic
- dmos62 3y agoMakes sense, no?
- bdowling 3y agoSome children are just smarter, more athletic, or better looking than their siblings.
- hervature 3y agoI think they are referring to this part: > It was the same chip, just that some came out the oven better than others. Not the part about selling.
- varispeed 3y agoThere are shops that buy CPUs in bulk and bin them themselves for suitability for overclocking and then sell the top performing ones at a premium. I got my i9-9900k this way, they binned it for 5.1GHz and it had been working 24h non stop for a few years (it is still working fine, but I no longer have a need for it to run).
- ip26 3y agoSilicon Lottery shut down two years back. It isn't clear to me whether manufacturer binning got tighter, overclocking just doesn’t work anymore, or auto-boosting are their lunch.
- retrac 3y agoThese days chips with different amounts of cores or cache may derive from the same mask. If one or more of the cores or banks of cache are defective, they're disabled.
- rasz 3y agoIntel/AMD do not test every single die. Once you get stable output from the foundry you learn a max clock/wafer location distribution.
- 4rt 3y agoThat's interesting. I always thought each one had a basic pass-fail test after packaging.