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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Saturn V who wrote (77138)	10/26/1999 2:10:00 PM
From: Yousef	Respond to of 1571150

Saturn V, Re: "So the shrinks typically run cooler and at a lower voltage." I completely agree with your analysis, SV ... If AMD doesn't change the operating voltage moving to .18um, this is a "good clue" that performance will also not improve much. However, AMD would get the benefits of reduced die size. Make It So, Yousef

To: Saturn V who wrote (77138)	10/26/1999 2:13:00 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571150

Saturn V, re:<A shrink of the MOS gate , must be accompanied by an equivalent reduction in gate oxide thickness.If this is not done the gate will not shutoff in the OFF state. The thinner oxide and shorter channels create several reliability problems, unless the voltage is reduced. So most shrinks are accompanied by a reduction in voltage.> Some people think the gate sizes will not be reduced much because they are already almost at 0.18.

To: Saturn V who wrote (77138)	10/26/1999 2:52:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 1571150

Saturn, That is what I suspected, glad to see it confirmed by so many people. Bill

To: Saturn V who wrote (77138)	10/26/1999 9:51:00 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571150

Hi Saturn V; I don't know if someone has mentioned this yet, but there is another possible reason why AMD is keeping the voltage the same. The Athlon .25 uses an incredible amount of power. The current was something like 45 amps. Maybe they were running the old ones at a derated voltage in order to prevent them from catching on fire... Everybody, who overclocks, knows that the Athlons run a lot faster than their rated speed. From what I've read, in order to get them to go faster, you have to reduce the voltage. To me, this indicates that the chip is thermally limited, certainly not voltage limited. The formula for power consumption, P =fCV^2, indicates that voltage is doubly significant in power consumption. So derating your voltage by 10% results in a power reduction of 20%. It is also well known that the Athlon is pushing the power consumption limits of the motherboard. I am suggesting that they were pushing the power dissipation limits of the chip, as well. The Athlon was designed to be a .18u chip, so that is where it will shine, not on the .25u process. I'm guessing that the new process speeds them up by at least 100MHz, possibly much, much more. But I'm not a process guy like some of the rest of you, so what do I know. -- Carl