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To: Bill Jackson who wrote (4190)	2/3/1998 1:49:00 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6843

Bill, this is my last attempt to clear your confusion: "the chipmakers, Intel included produce the specs for their chip sets well in advance, and they are tested by the board makers, and revised until they are useable by a wide spectrum of board makers." First, I would exclude Intel form this nice company. Do you believe that Intel gives their specs to Taiwan more in advance than to their internal board designers? "The Taiwanese can have a new board prototype in 2-3 days after getting chip set specs.." ???? do you ever read what you wrote? "..and samples" - this is A BIG DIFFERENCE. Dont you see it? "They can do test cycles and make a next protoype board in 1-2 days" - impossible. For the new board there is no automated assembly line yet. The prototypes must be populated and soldered BY HANDS. This is much longer than 1-2 days you think. "Modern logic analyzers can measure the timing and other parameters to help get the board made fast." You tell me. Analysers can measure, but HUMAN CANNOT ANALYSE data that fast. You cannot speed-up the debugging by assigning more engineers to this task. Sometimes it takes WEEKS to figure out what is wrong with signal propagation, and how to fix the problem. (example - for Ph.D P.Engel it took one YEAR to figure out the reason for residual water in chip package. It cost about $8M to Intel) "A friend of mine works for a Taiwan company and he tells me that when a hew chip set comes out it is 24 hours aday work to get the motherboard ready and through all the prototype cycles needed to make it go." I can believe that. The only one piece of info is missing here - how many "24 hours aday" workdays it takes? "Most chip set vendors provide a schematic start motherboard..," If you think, this argument totals all your sentiments: in the case of Intel, it means that THEY ALREADY HAVE DONE THE DESIGN, and boards are probably in mass production by the time you just receive the reference schematics. "..and they just optimize it and find the parametric variability with assorted glue and other parts to allow them to make a high yield board." This is probably the only true statement in your post. Sorry.