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

To: Yousef who wrote (37330)	9/22/1998 11:18:00 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571811

Yousef, <Moving from 2.2V down to 1.8V will require "major" changes to their FET "architecture" ...> Really? Major? You must be a real top-notch Ph.D to derive this. Let me, as a "screwdriver", tell you something. A digital device either works on specified workload in the specified temperature range and voltage, or does not (some other conditions apply). If it works at 10% below that limit, it will work. Forever. Period. If you can remember, old-fashion CMOS logical devices worked at any voltage from 3V to 15V, just the top frequency was specified somewhat differently:) Now go try an experiment. Take a PC board with an analog secondary power supply, attach a trimpot to a proper place, and use a small screwdriver (don't try to use your brain power, it will not work, use a screwdriver) to trim it, with a voltmeter attached. Got it? Now plug in any K6-266-2.2Vcore. You will be amazed to find out that the device will work at 200MHz and 1.7V (even below that) very reliably: all OS, benchmarks, burn-in, screen savers, etc. Tell me now what "major" "architectural" changes had happen during this experiment? Then get lost. <If the demo K7 is at 1.8V, then AMD will claim that this is their .18um process.> What if not? Who cares what they would or would not "claim"? Don't be ridiculous, you must understand that the 0.25 or 0.18 "feature" size is a purely marketing blurb, no serous technical parameter stands behind this "feature". It is very stretchable, and depends how you define it:) Better give a straight answer, as in a deposition: in your opinion, what variant of K7 processor AMD is capable to demonstrate, in a simple form <freq:voltage>. Actually, a range could also suffice. No need to supplement your answer with calculations of Leff and Idsat... Please share with us your deep vision of current technology. Don't be shy. All AMD investors are looking at you, our technological leader! You can make it!

To: Yousef who wrote (37330)	9/23/1998 11:02:00 AM
From: MikeyB	Respond to of 1571811

RE: "...This will be HYPE'd as their .18um process..." I believe that no matter what voltage they demo the K7 at, it will be on their latest and greatest .25um technology. My reasoning is that in order to develope/debug a product, you need a fairly robust/reliable process. I doubt that AMD's .18um process is robust enough to do the needed debug work. There is also historical precedent at AMD. K5 was developed on .5um process (It was huge! ~1cm X 2cm, yes centimeter). And K6 was developed on .35um process. MikeyB