Intel's dual core Smithfield two slabs together

THE BURNING QUESTION about dual cores is how will Intel implement Smithfield and its spawn. Since it is just two cores on a slab, it could be done in a bunch of ways.

Intel is not going to take the easy way out, put two cores in a package and wire them together, but they are going to come close.

Smithfield will simply be two adjacent Prescott cores with a little additional wiring between them. Every second row of cores on a wafer will probably be mirror imaged and the only new stuff is the wiring between the two cores.

This will be done in such a way that if one die is bad, they can salvage a single core Prescott 5xx from the other half.

This means that yield will probably be near 100% on the resulting parts, some will be Smithfields, others Prescotts. You can hardly classify that as bin splits, but it does get the job done. µ