At 2004-11-11T10:41:48+1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> No, rather being near the beginning. The chipmaker designs a brand new
> (or significantly changed) chip, which as life goes requires heaps
> more transistors and thus silicon real estate. To manufacture it, new
> areas of technology have to be entered, and optimisation doesn't
> happen for all parameters at the same time. Most important is to get
> the chip out the door!! After that, the manufacturing process can be
> improved and power consumption reduced.
You might've been confused by the way I put my earlier statement. We're
not in disagreement. I meant that the warmer CPUs are found near the
end of a particular packaging/process lifecycle. I'm also talking about
the lifecycle of a particular part family, rather across large design
changes or different parts.
For example, looking at the early subset of the AMD Athlon family[0]:
MHz Max Thermal
Power (Watts)
Model 1:
500 42
600 50
700 50
Model 2:
600 34
700 39
800 48
900 60
1000 65
Model 4:
700 38
800 42
900 49
1000 54
So, for example, if you happened to pick up an older Model 1 700MHz
part, it's going to run warmer than the same Model 4 700MHz part.
[0] Section 6.9, Table 10:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/21016.pdf
Cheers,
-mjg
--
Matthew Gregan |/
/| [EMAIL PROTECTED]
