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

To: StockMan who wrote (26548)	12/8/1997 1:04:00 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572963

S, "Why did the K6 233 start off with 3.2v in the first place while the other parts manufactured on the same process run at 2.8?" The question to ask is, "Why didn't AMD just spec all the parts at 3.2 volts (or 3.3 for that matter)? The reason is that few motherboards back then had the 3.2 volt voltage or a power supply using switching regulators, which is pretty much demanded by the higher current consumption at 3.2 volts. It is NOT because the K6-166 and K6-200 chips themselves would "burn up." Another good question to ask is, "How does increasing the voltage from 3.2 to 3.3 volts triple the number of K6-233's which can be produced from a wafer? The answer: it DOESN'T, not by a long shot. Consider this: going from 2.9 volts to 3.2 volts is NOT ENOUGH to move 50% of the K6-200's to the K6-233 speed. How do I know this? Because, of all 3 speed bins during the months August through October, the K6-200 was the MOST AVAILABLE, selling at retail close to its wholesale price. Of the million K6's sold in the 3rd quarter, only 150K were K6-233's, probably 400 to 500K were K6-200's. All K6-200's have to meet the 200MHz speed at 2.9v. Of 550K to 650K K6's that could meet the 200MHz speed at 2.9 volts, only 25% of them (150K) could meet the 233MHz speed at 3.2 volts. (in Q3) An increase of 0.3v in supply voltage only bumps up the speed for one fourth of the processors. This is a fact. To assert that an additional 0.1 volt of supply voltage could have an even bigger effect on maximum operating frequency is patently ridiculous. At most this would increase the number of K6-233's from 15% TO 20%. Petz