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Subject: Re: a question for you Vincent

Author: Keith Evans

Date: 15:25:22 07/02/03

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On July 02, 2003 at 17:58:58, Aaron Gordon wrote:


>Hard for me to explain, but the extra heat BurnK7 generates would push your chip
>'over the edge' if it was that unstable. Running your 'important' code for
>example would result in a cpu temperature a few degrees cooler. Read my post for
>proof how the cpu would be stable in those few degrees. Also, I don't run the
>chips on the very edge. Don't knock my pretested chips before you try them.
>I've taken a lot of time/effort to make sure they work flawlessly.

This is only true if the code in question is exercising the critical timing
path(s). Designers typically do a static timing analysis to find the worst case
paths in our chips - I'm sure that AMD does this. What you are doing is a
dynamic timing verification with no knowledge of the worst case paths. You may
be running enough different tests that you will catch it, but unless you have
verified it then you don't really know.

We typically use an oven to heat parts up for qualification testing. BurnK7
seems more like something that you use to test that your system level design
(airflow,...) is OK, rather than to qualify a chip across temperature.

AMD themselves missed the JPEG bug. I'm sure that they spent a lot of time and
effort developing their tests too.

If I were buying your chips for a home gaming PC them I would feel comfortable.
I would not buy them for a machine which was doing something like producing IC
masks. There I would spend the extra couple of thousand for a machine which is
operating within the manufacturer's specifications. (Yes and even then I could
get burned.)

Are the packages hermetically sealed before and after modification? (I don't
know if they are hermetically sealed before or not, and I don't know what goes
on during the modification.)



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