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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)
INTC 40.34-2.6%Dec 8 3:59 PM EST
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To: HIA who wrote (71915)1/23/1999 5:56:00 PM
From: grok   of 186894
 
I think that this serial number thing is a spinoff of the fact that Intel needed to make a technology change for something called "cache ram redundancy" which means that they can avoid losing chips which have a bad sram bit by using laser repair to replace the bad bit (actually a row or column of bits) with a spare row or column which have been provided for this purpose. "Laser repair" means that a laser beam blows aluminum fuses. However, Intel and everyone else is switching from aluminum metal to copper metal which is a problem for laser repair. Therefore, I believe that Intel is moving to another fusing method which uses flash ram cells for fuses. All is this just manufacturing trivia which normally no one would care about.

However, I image that a bunch of Intelers were sitting around brainstorming about what else they could do with the flash now that they needed it anyway. Along with worthy ideas like "we could use it to optimize self-timed circuits for better performance" came "we could use it screw people who are overclocking by puting a serial number on each chip." The latter idea was warmly embraced by marketing but then they started to worry about how this would look to the public. So they decided to package this idea as if it were a security feature.

Of course, maybe I am just the suspicious type.
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