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

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (66618)	12/30/2001 8:07:43 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

You say that modern chips are so complex that a thorough test would take quite a while, so they build in section test systems and as long as all sections work OK and the pathways between them are OK it can replace comprehensive testing? Bill, test is a major consideration as well as capitol expense. When you look at a company's ability to ramp you must consider more than the fab. I don't think people want me to waste bandwidth and go into detail here. In general only a few seconds are allowed for test but there are exceptions to that too. When you consider that a modern tester costs several million and each device must be tested at least twice, you can see how a company's capitol spending goes far beyond fabs. I estimate Intel produces at least 75 million chips a quarter. At 5 seconds each test that would make 375 million seconds times 2 = 750 million seconds of test time per quarter or about 58 million seconds per week or 8.25 million per day or 343K per hour or 5723 per minute or almost 100 multi million dollar testers running 24/7. At 75% uptime plus engineering use etc, that makes a requirement of about 130 testers. At 10 seconds per test you can make that 260 multi million dollar testers. You get the idea... EP