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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yousef who wrote (51855)	8/21/2001 11:30:38 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

"Thus, INTC has a different (more stringent) reliability specification than AMD." So I guess the 1.13GHz PIII was the most reliable of all?

To: Yousef who wrote (51855)	8/21/2001 11:47:18 AM
From: revision1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

"Nice try. No, the Physics are the same for both INTC and AMD. If AMD is willing to run at higher junction temperatures, then they will exhibit more reliability failures and shorter operating life. This is because device physics failures are accelerated by temperature. Thus, INTC has a different (more stringent) reliability specification than AMD" I Don't think so! Most commercial semiconductors are rated for 125 degrees C Tj max. with excellent long time reliability. Everyone is ignoring is the effect of temperature on logic switching speed. The hotter the chip the slower the switching speed. These processors are being designed with very thin logic timing margins. When the chip gets to hot, setup and hold times for the logic a violated and the processor fails until the temperature is reduced. The lower Tj max for the Intel processor is indicative of less logic timing margin then AMD processors. Regards

To: Yousef who wrote (51855)	8/21/2001 12:46:38 PM
From: fyodor_	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Yousef: Sorry Bill ... Nice try. No, the Physics are the same for both INTC and AMD. If AMD is willing to run at higher junction temperatures, then they will exhibit more reliability failures and shorter operating life. This is because device physics failures are accelerated by temperature. Thus, INTC has a different (more stringent) reliability specification than AMD. You are wrong here and you know it. Even Intel recognizes this fact and have only recently had to lower their Tj(max). Take a look at the table I posted from Intel's own data sheets. It's clear that every time Intel was "forced to" (or "wanted to", depending on your interpretation of motivation) introduce new parts back with the slotted PIIIs, they had to take a severe reduction in Tj(max). However, a few months later when a new revision was ready, they could increase the Tj(max) again. -fyo

To: Yousef who wrote (51855)	8/21/2001 1:45:27 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Yousef, I would expect different processes to have different susceptabilities to atomic migration, i.e., diffusion of dopant atoms in various directions. Since this is accelerated by temperature that means different processes will be more or less prey to this thanothers. Small feature modern CPU designs are far more susceptable than older larger feature designs, like TTL or transistors simply because the distances are far larger with these older parts and thus they can tolerate higher temperatures, like 125C, before the suffer from migration. Does that mean that Intel has some far smaller sections on the die, maybe to make it hit 2 GHZ? and those are the parts that cook to destruction first? Bill