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

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (84301)	12/29/1999 3:02:00 PM
From: ericneu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572887

With millions of transistors there will be errors. The error hunt can start early on in the chip design libraries. Eliminate these early errors and they do not reach the final stage masks. AMD might have better tools than Intel. Intel might be house-tool bound and AMD selects the best tools on the open market? Then test exhaustively in emulation, with an emulator that has fewer errors and finally make a part, test that to death, fix all you find and test some more. Ideally there is a large degree of parralellism so it can proceed rapidly. --- I'm afraid you totally missed my point. With chips as complex as the PIII and Athlon, there will be errata. It doesn't matter what testing tools and methodologies you use. The chips themselves (not to mention their environment) are too complex to ensure absolute perfection. - Eric

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (84301)	12/29/1999 3:21:00 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572887

Bill, just to let you know, and despite my haranguing of Elmer, I also am a little suspicous of the lack of any errata for the Athlon. I assume it is because the revision guide has to include a full characterization of any errata which gives the exact conditions under which it can occur and whether or not the error can occur using commercial software and operating systems. I agree that its very unlikely there is anything serious but remember in this business anything is possible. Petz