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

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (59099)	5/21/1999 3:37:00 PM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572035

Jim, How long does it take to reasonably debug a chip after first silicon? 12-18 months from first silicon to market is pretty typical. Microprocessors have to be essentially perfect, and it takes a while to flush all the bugs out. Scumbria

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (59099)	5/21/1999 3:50:00 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1572035

Re: "How long does it take to reasonably debug a chip after first silicon?" Jim - this is exactly what we were trying to tell you last December when you declared the K7 just about ready for production. It ain't that easy and it doesn't happen that fast. A new design could take nearly a year to fully debug. If Anand is right there still isn't a fully debugged K7. EP

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (59099)	5/21/1999 4:45:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1572035

Jim - Re: "How long does it take to reasonably debug a chip after first silicon?" That depends on the CPU - and the DESIGN STAFF ! Since the K7 is a "new core", AMD is clearly having problems getting it production worthy. That should be reassuring to AMD's customers ! In retrospect, it indicates that AMD's design approach is heavily flawed - especially in light of the LATE & S L O W Kmart 63 "ramp" ! Intel's approach - using the P6 core over and over - has allowed them greater opportunities for "quick" success. Mendocino was essentially production worthy on first silicon. Dixon was also - but was tweaked for lower power at high speed. Coppermine first silicon has very minimal problems on first silicon - and a minor metal mask tweak will fix that problem. Chip sets are another story. Camino was a real learning experience - not so much from a logic design standpoint, but from an electrical interface to a very high speed, poorly characterized DRDRAM bus structure - with all the attendant problems of transmission line issues. Paul