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To: Tony Viola who wrote (158324)	2/11/2002 1:15:50 PM
From: wanna_bmw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Tony, Re: "Almost as absurd as the idea of Intel backing out of their IA-64 development in favor of x86-64 is the unfortunate perception that the world’s largest desktop microprocessor manufacturer is not driven by engineering but rather by marketing. If microprocessor design were easy enough for a team of PR agents to tackle then many of us would have to change majors or head back to school very soon. The fact of the matter is that Intel is as driven by innovation as they are by engineering and in order to get an idea of what exactly goes on inside Intel, we made a trip up to the Intel Labs in Hillsboro, Oregon. This article won’t cover any NDA information, it won’t reveal secrets about Intel’s roadmaps for 2002, rather it will serve as a bit of insight into how Intel operates at the engineering level. The Intel you normally hear about is the Intel that’s pulling balloons down at Computex or the Intel that’s suing VIA for something or other, today we’ll be showing you the Intel that doesn’t care about anything outside of making fast, reliable and powerful circuits." Liar Dan and the other AMDroids ought to read this over at least five times. It's nice to see even their favorite web spokesman telling it like it is! wbmw

To: Tony Viola who wrote (158324)	2/11/2002 1:29:31 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

"Good article, as usual,.." I like this slip: anandtech.com "The Pentium 4’s double-pumped ALUs are actually only 16-bits wide, thus requiring a single clock to produce one 32-bit result." That's the reason why Intel was shy to call the P4 a "4GHz" CPU - the corresponding data path is too narrow...

To: Tony Viola who wrote (158324)	2/11/2002 1:51:22 PM
From: Robert Douglas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Tony, The tool that Anand mentions (Focused Ion Beam) isn't exactly proprietary, it's made by another Oregon company named FEI Company (Ticker FEIC) I have been invested in this for several years and have never been able to drum up any interest in the FEIC board here at SI. My personal feeling is that FIBs are an idea whose time has come. <tout, tout> So if anyone is interested: Subject 24190 There’s another proprietary tool that Intel uses in order to fix these very types of problems – it’s called a Focused Ion Beam (FIB). The FIB tool is another large machine that takes a piece of silicon and instead of detecting problems with it the tool can be used to fix problems. Let’s say that using the LVP we mentioned earlier one of the operators discovers that the CPU has an extra NAND gate that must be bypassed. In order to bypass it, the input lines coming into the NAND gate and the output line leaving the gate must be cut, and a new connection must be made between those wires. In order for the FIB tool to have access to the part of the silicon that it will be operating on the core itself must be shaved down to around 1.7 microns in height. This obviously must be done with the utmost care otherwise the core may develop stress fractures and be completely ruined in the process. Intel has another set of tools that preps the core for use with the FIB tool. Once in the machine, the FIB can begin cutting wires and inserting new ones through the command of an operator sitting at a workstation. Depending on the complexity of the circuit repair being performed an average operation can take anywhere from a few hours to multiple days; all this just to add or remove a wire that’s hundredths of a micron in length. Keep that in mind the next time you get upset that AMD or Intel delays the release of a new CPU.

To: Tony Viola who wrote (158324)	2/11/2002 3:13:57 PM
From: THE WATSONYOUTH	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Good article, as usual, by Anand, as he gets a trip up to the Intel Labs in Hillsboro, Oregon Very impressive facilities. But, you know..... for all those facilities, all those resources, all those researchers, all those development dollars, all those marketing dollars, etc.... the fastest AMD processor (at least at the .18um technology node which is all we can compare to date) significantly out performed the fastest corresponding Intel processor and cost significantly less. Now....let's have the Intel stooges provide some rationalizations for that. Who's first??? THE WATSONYOUTH