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

To: EricRR who wrote (114136)	6/4/2000 7:18:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 1587930

RatbertRyandGinger? I thibk in chip design there are specialists in each area, heat, power, speed etc and there has to be a coming together at some point where all these inputs are assembled and the fears of the heat men are pitted against the speed and power people as often these involve opposing aspects(faster=hotter=more power etc) so each tried to curb the others lest their parameters be exceeded. The they make the first one...it runs...no smoke. Look for the hot spots with heatcams, run it faster and faster until it stops and look for that baulk point etc. It is true that complex simulation programs allow CPUs to start far ahead of where they started 10 years ago(in relative terms), but they are not panaceas and there always needs to be successive rounds of optimization, each taking quite a while. Ideally then can make it perfect before it sees daylight....whcih is what Intel has done before the Athlon. Their lead allowed them to make the next one perfect and then drop it on the track with the wheels going pretty quick...and then slowly make it go faster. Now the Athlon forced Intel to trim some of this....we all know what happened next. Intel is frantically trying to make a baby in one month with 9 women. Often there are little wars between departments who are enganged in finger pointing games, "his design will not work" and so some poor top exec playes eeny-meeney-miney-moe and the P-III/820/??? is thrust forward, not quite ready for prime time. Bill