🚀 go-pugleaf

Keith R. Williams wrote in message ...
>On Sun, 21 Jun 1998 17:32:00, "Doug Chism"
><chismdm@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> One thing I can say is that as far as chip prices go - they are almost
>> always directly related to yield. when they make the chips - a large
number
>> on the wafer cannot be used at the tolerances they designed them to. So
they
>> are used for lower clock versions. If 95% of the chips come out of
>> manufacturing only meeting the 350Mhz spec - they have to charge a lot
more
>> for the 400Mhz chip.
>
>Hogwash!  Prices are determined solely by market demand.  It
>matters not one iota what the yields are.  Price and cost have no
>correlation in the semiconductor business.  Evidence the Celeron.
> It *is* a Deschutes chip on a Deschutes card.  It doesn't have
>an L2 and is clock-locked.  Yet it sell for a few bits less than
>a PII-350 or PII-400.  It is the same chip, remember.

The the costfor P2 350 and P2 400 are basically the cache memory.  You know
how much it cost to make such High Speed ram?



>
>> Sure - game players dont care much about these
>> tolerances cause they run the hell out of them, but people who use these
>> things at work expect them to be reliable and not buggy.
>
>Again, Hogwash!  I don't overclock business systems, or even
>those at home, but to say that it's technology that drives the
>business is just naieve.  Intel got caught short with the K6 and
>did whatever it could to cover the low end while trying to
>support the margins at the high end.  They packaged Deschutes
>into Celerons (the Covington variety) as a stop-gap.
>
>Tell me again that technology reigns supreme.  Intel is so lost
>in themselves that they didn't see the <$1000 systems coming,
>though it was obvious for six months beforehand (and I'll be
>generous).
>
>> Its not like you
>> can start up a fab shop and have chips rolling out the door in two weeks
>> that are in tolerances. Manufacturing takes time, and money, before a
steady
>> consistent flow of chips can be produced. Costs reflect this. Take a
class
>> in materials engineering to see what types of tolerances have to be
followed
>> to get clean fast silicon wafers with .25 die chips.
>
>Good grief.  Intel doesn't have the market cornered on smart
>people.  Processors are now taking their place along side memory
>(not to the same degree, admittadly) as commodities.  Intel
>hasn't a clue how to deal with this.  This was *obvious* at the
>last Intel Developer's Forum.
>
>----
>  Keith R. Williams
>  krw@ibm.net
>
>