4 ms·
Their ability to sell parts with defective cores fused off makes this analysis really quite complicated. Ad absurdum, say only 1% the 18 core dies have no defe
by reitzensteinm 12y ago
Their ability to sell parts with defective cores fused off makes this analysis really quite complicated.
Ad absurdum, say only 1% the 18 core dies have no defects and can be sold as such. In a vacuum, the chip would have be priced very high to cover the costs of low yields.
But since they can sell the defects at 8 cores for $1000 and 12 cores for $2000, they can be profitable on the reject chips alone. The 18 cores that work are a bonus.
They're no doubt priced at what Intel thinks the market will bare, meaning that either the process is great (so they're priced low to sell a ton), or that there's just not that much demand for the most high end product. Or some combination of the two.
- wmf 12y agoThe same logic is really obvious in GPUs, where you can get a 90%-good 600 sq. mm. chip for $500.
- masklinn 12y agoI'm not sure how it works out for these chips, but I remember stories a few years ago where the fabs were so high quality they didn't have enough defective chips to put in the lower bin, and had to bin "perfect" chips to reach target volumes.
- donavanm 12y agoThe first few spins of AMD Athlons circa 1999/2000 were exceptional in this regard. Parts actually binned at 700mhz were downclocked and sold in 500mhz packages. I dont recall anything similar with Intel recently, maybe some if the core2 stuff.