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

To: Kevin K. Spurway who wrote (35014)	7/23/1998 1:46:00 PM
From: Petz	Respond to of 1584007

Kevin, re:Xeon bug. And I also doubt the "workaround" that Intel developed for the bad ECC in the Xeon. Intel included ECC in the L2 cache of the Xeon so that yield could be increased at the high clock speeds the SRAM is subjected to. If a row or column of bits is bad here or there, the ECC would correct it and allow the part to pass. Unfortunately, there must be conditions for which the ECC doesn't work!. These conditions may be infrequent or obscure, but when you're doing 450 million memory reads a second, they are likely to pop up. Intel's solution is to fully test the SRAM to make sure it is perfect and the ECC is never exercised. ECC on external memory should still work, I presume. Unfortunately (for Intel), the solution takes TIME and lowers YIELD. Petz

To: Kevin K. Spurway who wrote (35014)	7/23/1998 2:24:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 1584007

Kevin - Re: "FACT. The Xeon, which you were counting on to shore up Intel's flagging margins, will be AT LEAST another two weeks late." You are probably right. Re: "Throwing money at a problem to speed up a development cycle apparently doesn't always work out for the best." How true ! Can you think of any company that did this? Paul

To: Kevin K. Spurway who wrote (35014)	7/23/1998 3:04:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1584007

Kevin - Re: " The Xeon, which you were counting on to shore up Intel's flagging margins, will be AT LEAST another two weeks late." Late news break - the XEON for servers may ship within 8 days - at the end of this month. Paul {========================} biz.yahoo.com Thursday July 23, 1:47 pm Eastern Time Intel Xeon chip to ship at end of July SAN FRANCISCO, July 23 (Reuters) - Intel Corp said that it will delay shipment of its Pentium II Xeon chip for servers running four processors until the end of July, as it repairs a second bug with a software fix in the complex processor. Intel had expected to ship Xeon for use in these so-called four-way systems in the middle of July, as it fixed and tested an earlier bug, or an errata, found when the chip runs in conjunction with a chipset called the 450-NX. The second errata was identified by Intel at the time of the Xeon launch at the end of June. Intel said it already has a software fix, or a workaround, for this second errata. ''This adds a week to 10 days for implementing the workaround,'' said an Intel spokesman in Santa Clara, Calif., adding that this is not the only errata in the complex chip, and that all complicated microprocessors have errata. Other errata in the Xeon Pentium II are posted on Intel's web site. Intel's Pentium II Xeon has already been shipping in systems in a different configuration with another chipset, targeted to workstations and servers running just one to two processors, with the chipset called the 450-GX. Both of these two bugs in the Xeon manifest themselves only when they are running in conjunction with the 450-NX chip set. Earlier Thursday, Piper Jaffray analyst Ashok Kumar said in a note to clients that Intel had found another bug in the Xeon, which he said was a more serious bug that impacts the speed path in the error correction code (ECC). ''It is one of the numerous things in a process that ensure no errors happen,'' said Intel spokesman Tom Waldrop. He added that the software fix does not involve any major changes in the company's manufacturing process, which Kumar was worried about because of the possible impact on third quarter revenues. ''We will be able to ship them by the end of July,'' Intel's Walrop said.