Comments on AIMeD Corporation: Cray Dumps AMD

scientia sucks

2008-05-08T17:09:00.000Z

scientia sucks

My reference to the "collapse comments" feature wa...

2008-05-06T20:39:00.000Z

My reference to the "collapse comments" feature was to deal with the spam posts. Someone copy/pasted enormous amounts of text to create very lengthy posts that made navigating the comments very difficult. They did it on Scientia's blog and then this one, the same way they used to do to Sharikou's blog.

But that feature lets you browse and read the comments that you want to see without having to scroll pasts the extremely large spam posts.

As for the blogs and comments sections, I read both blogs and both comments sections. I used to skim through the AMDZone forums before they locked them for non-registered accounts. The namecalling and flaming are easy enough to filter out on my own because they are not as pervasive as people want to claim, and there is enough worthwhile info to read. I can't judge its accuracy aside from seeing how things turn out in the future, so I don't worry about whether I'm being sold a bill of goods or not. Time and market forces will tell.

"However, it is quite easy to label a site as bril...

2008-05-06T20:26:00.000Z

"However, it is quite easy to label a site as brilliant when you only count the fraction of posts that are authoritative and accurate and ignore the rest of the garbage."

I'd much rather wade through a bunch of posts and find some good accurate posts, then read filtered down posts that sound authoritative and accurate but generally aren't because dissenting opinions are not allowed.

It's much easier to collapse the comments of a few and it is a small price to pay for the good dialogue that does exist.

BTW - AMD shares jumped today on some analyst thoughts that the lawsuit might be worth something and the possibility that asset lean/smart/[insert catchphrase of the week] may be rolled out soon.

I continue to think there is some value to the suit if for no other reason than the nuisance aspect of it - I'm sure Intel would pay some finite amount just to make it go away. However the longer it goes on the less incentive there is to do it. I think AMD should ask for cash (maybe 250-500mil) and elimination of the outsourcing clause in the x86 license (which would be a big deal for AMD) and move on. If this thing goes to trial and AMD does manage to win, it will likely be appealed and AMD won't see any money until probably 2010-2011 best case. The case has the most leverage it is going to have right now (once it goes to trial it becomes a carpshoot).

Just a reminder that the "collapse comments" optio...

2008-05-06T14:46:00.000Z

Just a reminder that the "collapse comments" option turns those massive spam posts into a single line of text that can be easily ignored.

"He has 20 comments on his last blog, and 12 of th...

2008-05-06T07:27:00.000Z

"He has 20 comments on his last blog, and 12 of them ARE FROM HIM!"

Heh, it still makes me smile when he used to compare his blog to this one and claim that his one is better because it had nearly twice as much comments. Of course when I said half of those were his own he wasn't exaclty gentle with me :)

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. antitrust lawsuit brie...

2008-05-06T06:31:00.000Z

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. antitrust lawsuit brief - PDF - 108 pages

Funny... Scientia claims no flaming on his blog......

2008-05-06T02:56:00.000Z

Funny... Scientia claims no flaming on his blog... well I did a little looking and may have found the magic answer!

He has 20 comments on his last blog, and 12 of them ARE FROM HIM! Comically, Sparks is in second place with 3 comments. To put that in perspective a mere 25% of the comments are not from him (or Sparks).

Yeah... nothing like good open, objective discussion! Perhaps if he finds a way to get to 100% of the comments being his, he will reach utopia.

Hector needs something more then his right hand, h...

2008-05-06T02:13:00.000Z

Hector needs something more then his right hand, he is going crazy

Hey DOC, tell ya what, send that guys IP address t...

2008-05-06T00:47:00.000Z

Hey DOC, tell ya what, send that guys IP address to me. I'll even pay you for your efforts.

I've got some friends in law enforcement here in NYC that owe me a few favors. I did some network installs downtown. I gave him a couple freebees. He'll more than happy to run this asshole down. Just put up on your next post.

SPARKS

This "LEAN" is old news. I work at an Intel Fab an...

2008-05-05T22:02:00.000Z

This "LEAN" is old news. I work at an Intel Fab and we've been using this for several years already. We call it something different but it's basically the same thing that Toyota started "Kaizen" awhile back. I personally think that on paper the whole concept looks great but in real world practice it is not that practical. Just makes management think that they have a better control of the floor.

"I've come to the conclusion that it is impossible...

2008-05-05T21:33:00.000Z

"I've come to the conclusion that it is impossible to measure accurately"

Coming from you (?!?!), that’s saying something! Kudos for even giving it a shot! I’ll bet it took months.

"Though some would argue that is exactly what you want when you enter the manufacturing stage - minimal risk."

"cost as much as single wafer equipment but may have as much as 2-5X the output capability per capital dollar spent, what would you do?"

Factoring in these two comments, I’ll answer your question; I'll tell you exactly what I did and what I am going to do.

1) Buy a $1500 behemoth-----done!
2) Buy some more INTC------ this week!

I love INTC’s conservative approach, “minimal risk”. I’ve seen too many loose cannons, screw up too many times, reinventing the wheel midstream.

SPARKS

One add:"As for the VDF (vertical diffusion furnac...

2008-05-05T20:49:00.000Z

One add:

"As for the VDF (vertical diffusion furnaces), surprisingly they are no more expensive than an average piece of fab process equipment."

And this is the fundamental problem with the whole single wafer processing move. Sure single wafer processing has some cycle time advantages but when you consider the furnaces (or you can also look at the wet etch benches too) cost as much as single wafer equipment but may have as much as 2-5X the output capability per capital dollar spent, what would you do?

"Additionally, I’ll bet there’s a fixed dollar amo...

2008-05-05T20:42:00.000Z

"Additionally, I’ll bet there’s a fixed dollar amount, determined by the corporate bean counters, cost wise to get a single wafer through the snake."

I've been involved with some cost modeling, and while there are generally specific cost targets (per wafer processed), I've come to the conclusion that it is impossible to measure accurately. There are simply too many fixed cost (building cost, equipment) and costs which are shared by the entire fab (fabwide facility costs, metrology, automation, service, headcount...) that are as significant if not more than the true variable costs (actual Silicon substraate, chemicals and gases, waste, etc...). So the best you can do is have a modeled/average #.

As for the VDF (vertical diffusion furnaces), surprisingly they are no more expensive than an average piece of fab process equipment.

Finally copy exactly has it's downsides too - once you enter volume manufacturing it pretty much discourages many changes as now you have to proliferate that change across a huge fleet of tools. Though some would argue that is exactly what you want when you enter the manufacturing stage - minimal risk, and only insert a change if there is a huge ROI. For engineers (and suppliers who want to implement their latest and greatest changes) it is disheartening but one minor screwup in terms of implementation of a change and it quickly kills the benefit the change had in the first place.

GIANT-If there's any doubt about the lack of consi...

2008-05-05T19:31:00.000Z

GIANT-

If there's any doubt about the lack of consistent quality of these chips, the entire line up, their speeds, and the way they overclock, this should dispelled them without any reservation.

E8300
E8400
And the currently on sale mega bullet,
E8500@3.16 (I’m was tempted to buy one these sweeties for shits and giggles)

They all clock, and clock well! Really, think about it, INTC’s standard on binning these things must be pretty high before they lock in those multipliers. It makes you wonder, if the relative price structures are based on feature sets, as apposed to speed bins. INTC is only competing with itself here, especially with a dual core solution.

When INTC revealed 45nM hafnium transistor technology as the biggest improvement to twenty years, generally, the Press reception varied from a yarn to beer fart. What the knuckleheads fail to realize, this process will be the foundation for the next generation architecture with an IMC pumped in. Imagine these chips on steroids? Man the thrill is back, big time, and the hits just keep on coming.

As far as my setup is concerned, overclocking this GEM was painless and a no brainer.

From CPUz :

9.0 X 450= 4050 MHz

Vcore 1.3975

On this board you set the memory parameter @ “*DDR3-1800 O.C.*
You set the option to allow the “memory strap to FSB” and you’re done!

450 quad pumped at the Memory will give you DDR-1800; again this is all factored in by the MOBO automatically. Everything is running synchronous, just like I like it.

So much for the idiots who complain about the high prices for premium MOBO’s, F**K ‘em, ya get what you pay for I say, in spades.

Besides, I used to spend a lot more money on things that could have got you thrown you in jail, and that includes booze! That said, what’s an extra 150-200 bucks? That’s used to be one night out in a club, easy, when 200 bucks meant something!

The SuperTalent ‘Project X” DDR-1800 memory gamble I took for $379 paid off huge. At these speeds it’s cold, not warm, not cool, just drop dead cold. (After the CPU cold water solution, I may purchase another set. However, stability concerns surface when running 4 discrete DIMM’s at high speeds, as opposed to two 2 GIG modules.)

I set the timings manually at the manufactures recommended 7-7-7-21.
The voltage was manually set at the recommended 2.0V

Speeds any higher will necessitate looser timings, 8-8-8-24, give or take, on any individual parameter, stability dependant, when locking in the *DDR-2000 O.C* option in the BIOS.

I’ll trade a few nanoseconds in latency for the looser timings and higher speeds. I haven’t gone there ---- yet.

ALL said, this 4 GIG synchronous solution was basically a no brainer. And to think, last year, I was plodding along at 1066 FSB. Now, that’s what I call leaping ahead.

SPARKS

This is interesting.Although, I haven’t had the QX...

2008-05-05T17:03:00.000Z

This is interesting.

Although, I haven’t had the QX very long, nor have I explored it's absolute limits, I have found the same VERY comfortable point at 4.06 GHz.

Yes, around 4GHz is perfect for the 45nm CPUs, both dual and quad (aside from the lower end quads that wouldn't hit 4GHz due to a FSB limit). Obviously the QX9650 and QX9770 are premium parts and are binned accordingly, so the power use is low and not all that much higher than my E8400 at ~4GHz. With a TRUE 120 equipped with a Scythe S-Flex fan the temperature under a full load has yet to exceed 50C.

I have, however, found the limit for air cooling:

From CPUz:

9.5 x 450= 4.275 GHz @1.408V, 1800 FSB, DDR3@1800 7-7-7-21 2T 2.0V

Sandra:

Processor Arithmetic= ALU 66835 MPS, SSE3 = 61753
Processor Multimedia= 549144 it/s, FP=267068
Memory bandwidth= 9576 m/sec!
(Now it’s clear why I waited for X48)
Cache + Memory Combined=65.47 G/s
32K blocks= 407 G/sec!
Latency=56ns
SuperPi 1M= 10 seconds!!!!!!

Obviously, both chips run cool (yours and mine) and there’s A LOT of headroom (a full GIG!), basically, on first production run. Binning these chips (?), man with the way these thing run, it’s a shame to deliberately lock in anything below 2.6. It looks like INTC doesn’t have very much to throw away.

I suspected INTC months ago sandbagged these chips when Barcelona fell on its ass. They were ready for Barcelona even if the son-of-bitch comfortably hit the 3 GHz+ speeds they were howling about for a year. It simply had no chance, ever, against Penryn, right out of the gate. Look at that Pheromone at 3.5 Gig, a cherry picked slab. The QX9770 s pee’s all over it at well bellow stock speeds!

The Phenom was cherry picked, and wasn't even stable at that speed. Eventually he settled for 3.4GHz with 1.58V! This would not be acheivable with air cooling. Constrast that to you and I both running these hafnium infused monsters at 4GHz+ on air! In terms of what Intel could release now, assuming a 1600FSB, I predict that 3.4 and 3.6Ghz for quads would be possible, and up-to 3.8GHz for dual core.

I don’t give a flying hoot what anybody say’s. INTC woke up and hit the floor running. If they don’t believe it, you and I have the evidence in hand to prove it.

E8400 @ 4 Gig
QX9770 @ 4 Gig

WITH NO MEANINGFULL DIFFERENCE IN THERMALS AT THESE SPEEDS!

That's right! The power consumption on this puppy is incredibly low at stock. Even overclocked to 4GHz the power consumption of the CPU is only around 100W, that's easily cooled with high end air. Obviously, at 4.5Ghz and beyond we're pushing the CPU to it's limits, so the power consumption is too high for 24/7 use without water IMO.

BTW: With all these runs, I haven’t had a lockup, boot failure, BSOD, or a failed Windows load, yet!

I've had one lockup, that was when I tried to reach 4.5GHz on the P5B deluxe. The northbridge was just running too hot for a 2GHz FSB. As I described in an earlier posting here, I attached a 40mm SilenX fan to it and that reduced the temperature considerably, I had no problems after that. The 790i has been a SUPERB board to me, I've had no issues; none at all.

I’m going to back this gem down to 4 Gig and cruise around nice and comfortable 24/7, all on air.

What sort of bus speed are you running there, and what speed are you running the DDR3 at? As I've mentioned before, 1780MHz works perfectly for me. A beautiful 4GHz clockspeed, 1780Mhz FSB and dual channels of DDR3 at 1780MHz a piece!

-GIANT

ho ho, that helmer site is awesome.

2008-05-05T13:46:00.000Z

ho ho, that helmer site is awesome.

"Fast forward to today - Microsoft walks away from...

2008-05-05T13:44:00.000Z

"Fast forward to today - Microsoft walks away from"

You said it. That was the first thing I thought of when I read the anouncement. Time to DUMP!!!! Yahoo.

SPARKS

“Sparks, I'll take a stab at your questions:”Thank...

2008-05-05T13:29:00.000Z

“Sparks, I'll take a stab at your questions:”

Thank you, excellent, that puts a lot of the pieces together. Especially with the above mentioned single flow (?) vs. batch operations discussed above.

“Here in lies the beauty of Intel's copy exactly approach - when you ship the lot to another fab, you know that tool is setup identically to the fab you are shipping from and will get identical processing.”

Whoa, great observation, one that didn’t occur to me, anyway. This seldom, if ever, is mentioned in the ‘pros and cons’ of the ‘copy exactly’ debate, probably because a lot of people wouldn’t get it anyway. Nonsense, with this kind of flexibility, personally, I think it would be stupid to take any other approach. Standardization of components has been the corner stone of HV industrial production for over a century.

I saw the test structures that are sacrificed when the wafer is cut here. I’m sure there are propriety methods to insure quality control at the very early stages of production. If there isn’t, there ought to be. Additionally, I’ll bet there’s a fixed dollar amount, determined by the corporate bean counters, cost wise to get a single wafer through the snake. Going down the entire line ain’t cheap, and a wafer is a terrible thing to waste.

http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/elmat_en/index.html

(Great site, by the way.)

This led me to a few more links where I found pictures of the vertical furnaces that heat the wafers in vertical batches. They looked huge, complicated, and expensive. I figured on the redundancy aspect to keep thing moving while repairs are made on the tools that go down. Some of the HV units queued up a number of FOUP’s as part of their specifications, as apposed to the lower volume R+D units. Given Dementia’s single flow argument and AMD's current execution, it may be to AMD’s advantage to stay small.

“The site experts are generally oncall 7x24 (some may work normal 5x8 shifts or the 3day/4day 12 hour shifts). In 'healthy' areas the oncall responsibility is rotated around. Again this is the second line of defense generally speaking to the FSE's (field service engineers) who are working in the fab (for most areas 7x24)”

I can see (and I know) that this is a nice position to have, especially if you’re a really good trouble shooter who has an intimate working knowledge of the equipment’s guts. I’d bet my shares in INTC these guy’s are “crackerjacks”, and the outstanding guys are really in demand. There’s lots of glory to be had when things are up and running quickly. Pressure, adulation, heroics, instant reward, for me this is an enviable position. I love glory; that’s me, guts and glory.

“Well the managers pester the engineers or ops people who then pester the technicians who are working on the tool.”

I was right; they are poor bastards. Obviously, Silicon rolls down hill, too.

Thanks again, (sigh) maybe in another life.

Very enlightening.

SPARKS

"I tell you what - if I were Ballmer right now... ...

2008-05-05T08:19:00.000Z

"I tell you what - if I were Ballmer right now... I'd threaten to walk away and say 'wow, if he can get such great performance, perhaps we shouldn't take the company oover and then when the stock crashes to the pre-takeover level and crashes again when Yang missed his ridiculous Q2 numbers, Ballmer should step back in and lowball an offer and say "how do you like me now?!?" (comment Apr23)

Fast forward to today - Microsoft walks away from Yahoo deal after the Yang-er thinks his company should have fetched $37/share.

So now instead of getting $31/share (actually MSFT increased it to 33 during negotiations), Yang will have to explain to his shareholders why the stock price is about to plummet to the low 20's. He had conveniently not set a stockholders meeting (so as not to have to answer to his stockholders?)... but I think he is required to do so or face serious repurcussions (I think you can eventually get de-listed). Expect calls for Yang's resignation, calls for election of a new board of directors and a potential avalanche of investor lawsuits.

Expect Balmer to come back in another quarter or two with an offer in the high 20's (though I cannot predict he will say 'how do you like them apples?')

Looks like Jerry Yang just pulled a Hector*

* Hector (from Webster's online)

HECTOR
Function: noun
Date: circa 2006

1: one who screws up
2: botch, blunder
3: one who screws stockholders due to poor decision making and an overly active ego.

Also can be used as a verb, as in he really Hector'd that deal...

I have a new respect for Ballmer on this decision (though I'm not sure where MSFT's SW/OS division is headed).

I want this: "The most amazing is that this machin...

2008-05-05T06:33:00.000Z

I want this:
"The most amazing is that this machine just cost as a better standard PC, but has 24 cores that run each at 2.4 Ghz, a total of 48GB ram, and just need 400W of power!! This means that it hardly gets warm, and make less noise then my desktop pc."

JumpingJack said...LEAN -- what the heck is this?L...

2008-05-05T04:16:00.001Z

JumpingJack said...
LEAN -- what the heck is this?

LEAN is the latest corporate buzzword for a methodology to improve process flow. It is the basis for the book "Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation".

Like most other systems of this sort I've seen it seems to go too far. I can easily see this becoming part of a bureaucratic mindset that requires slavish adherence to a system whether it is applicable or not. It originated out of the Toyota Production and Management System. You can read more about it
here.

Sparks, I'll take a stab at your questions:"To the...

2008-05-05T04:16:00.000Z

Sparks, I'll take a stab at your questions:

"To the tools or the operators, test that wafer and subsequently rejected it at that point? How far down the line can a bad one go?"

This varies considerable by both process step and by IC manufacturer - it is a question of your chosen monitoring scheme. Ultimately the goal would be a rock stable process that would require no metro whatsoever, but that is not the real world (but perhaps the Asset Smart world?).

Sometimes an issue will go all the way through the line and not get caught unitl sort/test (basically testing and binning the chips). However there are numerous 'inline' monitors throughout the process flow where either a test wafer run before or after the lot is checked or the production lot itself is checked. Many times an IC manufacturer will put test structures in the scribe lines to test problematic issues. The scribe line is used as this is the area where the slicing and dicing takes place so it is not an active part of the chip which you could potentially do damage to. There are also 'non-destructive' metrology techniques where you could measure the active areas of the chip inline without doing any sort of damage/contamination.

"Further, does the whole line get bottlenecked at one area if a tool’s in it’s respective group blows a relay, motor, pump, circuit board, etc.?"

This is classic constraint theory and is mitigated in several ways - first off I do not know of any fab that runs without redundancy - meaning at least 2 tools to run any given step. This way if a tool goes down, the other tool can be used - this may limit the overall capacity, but at least you have some. The other thing that is often done is so called 'swing tools' (this cannot be done in all areas of the fab). Sometimes if a tool is down hard (meaning for a significant time), a similar tool used in a different step can be quickly converted to cover capacity on a temporary basis.

Finally in Intel's case (or any other manufacturer with more than 1 fab); wafers can be packed, shipped and processed in a different fab until the hard down is addressed (this is a rather rare practice though). Here in lies the beauty of Intel's copy exactly approach - when you ship the lot to another fab, you know that tool is setup identically to the fab you are shipping from and will get identical processing.

"What do they do when some poor bastard is trying to troubleshoot/fix this thing while the rest of the line is pumping along behind him, or worse, nothing is feeding out in front of him?

Do these guys sleep at night?"

Well the managers pester the engineers or ops people who then pester the technicians who are working on the tool. Generally speaking there is 7x24 coverage which can address probably 90-95% of the issues. In the case of a new or uncommon failure, there are strict escalation protocols with the equipment supplier if the tool is down for more than 6 hours, 13 hours, 24 hours (the interval varies by company). It is gernerally not very long before the equipment supplier's expert is onsite if the problem cannot be addressed by the team that is onsite/oncall 7x24.

Generally speaking these are not pleasant situations, especially if it is in a constraint area in the fab where you need every tool up to meet the fab output goals.

There are other areas in the fab where you may have 7-10 tools and have some excess capcity where it is a bit better (but still not plesant) Suppose for example you need 7.3 tools to meet output, so you therefor buy 8 tools to meet the output. If one of those tools goes down hard, realistically all you are doing is taking things down from 7.3 to 7 in terms of capacity.

Now suppose you are in an area that needs 2.9 tools (and therefore you have 3). If you lose one of those tools for a while you are now in a world of hurt.

And then to address your other question the wafers basically start piling up in the queue behind that process step. And what is significant about this is when you finally do get the tool back up, you now process a bunch of those lots and effectively have a 'bubble' moving through the fab which impacts areas downstream as well until you finally get that bubble out of the line.

The site experts are generally oncall 7x24 (some may work normal 5x8 shifts or the 3day/4day 12 hour shifts). In 'healthy' areas the oncall responsibility is rotated around. Again this is the second line of defense generally speaking to the FSE's (field service engineers) who are working in the fab (for most areas 7x24)

"SMART"AMD's clever cheats who are able to get mon...

2008-05-05T01:16:00.000Z

"SMART"

AMD's clever cheats who are able to get money from arabs, sucker people to continue to believe in their business plan, when the got none. That is really "SMART" lose billions, got no credible likelhood of ever really being able to compete with your big rival yet get people to buy your story hook, line and sinker.

But I'm smarter then that.

AMD BK in 2009

If anyone is curious about AMD's FAB in Malta New ...

2008-05-04T18:09:00.000Z

If anyone is curious about AMD's FAB in Malta New York I found the...

Supplemental Draft Enviornmental Impact Statement

It discusses Water, Gas and Power requirements for Fab 4x, also construction timetables (from when they start, not now), Building sizes and Cleanroom Square footages.

All in all, it is pretty interesting to see what it takes to build and operate Fab 4X.

-----------------------------------

Also, if you would like to see siteplans for Fab 4X, aerial overlays etc...

Town of Malta (Luther Forest Technonlogy Campus)

In The Know-Ok, you have these Pods running around...

2008-05-04T15:18:00.000Z

In The Know-

Ok, you have these Pods running around the FAB loaded with twenty five VERY expensive 300mm wafers. Let’s say at various stages of the process one wafer in particular becomes unusable. Do the tools or the operators, test that wafer and subsequently rejected it at that point? How far down the line can a bad one go?

Further, does the whole line get bottlenecked at one area if a tool’s in it’s respective group blows a relay, motor, pump, circuit board, etc.?

What do they do when some poor bastard is trying to troubleshoot/fix this thing while the rest of the line is pumping along behind him, or worse, nothing is feeding out in front of him?

Do these guys sleep at night?

SPARKS