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To: pgerassi who wrote (103680)	10/26/2003 1:09:20 PM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 275872

Re: The process guys found that the standard characterizations missed a leakage mode insignificant at standard sizes That sure seems to fit everything we've seen. Regards, Dan

To: pgerassi who wrote (103680)	10/26/2003 1:14:25 PM
From: dougSF30	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Pete, Interesting hypothesis. Here's a question: Intel's R&D process researchers evaluated the new 90nm process using the current at that time test and measurement standards to produce the standard characterizations. The process guys found that the standard characterizations missed a leakage mode insignificant at standard sizes that was very significant at the custom sizes typically used by the designers. So why the heck wouldn't the process guys initially characterize the process using various "custom" sizes. They must have some idea what the design guys are going to do, otherwise why bother? Or is this typically not true? I don't know, I'm just asking. TIA, Doug

To: pgerassi who wrote (103680)	10/26/2003 2:05:46 PM
From: Pravin Kamdar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Pete, "The designers misused the characterizations by using transistor designs out of ranges covered by the characterizations!" "If they would use more standard transistors instead of these weird custom ones in their designs, the CPUs would perform as expected, so its a design problem!" Not likely. All ranges would be covered, with special parameter sets for small geometry devices (where effective width and length adjustment parameters do not scale well). I would suspect, that if problems were due to characterization and modeling, they would be due to problems with thermal modeling wrt temperature. Pravin