Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: AMD or Pentium4?

Author: Keith Evans

Date: 15:20:41 04/09/03

Go up one level in this thread


On April 09, 2003 at 18:01:09, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On April 09, 2003 at 16:58:35, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>
>>On April 09, 2003 at 12:14:37, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>_IF_ it is verified.  This is not easy.  It means you have to run a program that
>>>specifically
>>>tests "edge conditions" by running sliding 1 patterns thru every instruction, to
>>>see if there is
>>>any unexpected cross-talk at higher frequencies, etc.
>>>
>>>Just because it runs some application correctly, does _not_ mean it will run
>>>_all_ applications
>>>correctly.
>>
>>Do you know what testing Intel/AMD does to determine rated clock frequency?
>>Seems like you should be able to do that, or something similar, without too much
>>effort.
>>
>>-Tom
>
>
>I know what Intel used to do.  In fact, most every hardware manufacturer has
>such
>tests for their products.  IE disk drives manufacturers, SCSI controller
>manufacturers,
>etc.
>
>Hsu had to develop the same tools for deep blue and he found some interesting
>problems in
>DB2 chips, if you have read his book...

Doing a static timing analysis and finding the worst paths would potentially
help. You would want to exercise those paths for sure. Only the designers can do
this of course...

And/Or you could perform a fault grading analysis on your vectors and see what %
of the design that you're exercising, and assume that a very high percentage of
testing will catch problems.

Most ASICs aren't speed binned, so I'm not sure how Intel/Amd handles this sort
of thing.

I know that Hsu had some interesting structures such as on-chip tristate busses
which can make timing analysis difficult.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.