The Inquirer-Home

Intel's dual core Smithfield two slabs together

Burning question o'the'year
Fri Dec 31 2004, 10:49
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

Share this:

Comments

There are no comments submitted yet. Do you have an interesting opinion? Then be the first to post a comment.

aboutus
Advertisement
Subscribe to INQ newsletters
Advertisement
INQ Poll

Authorities in several countries raided Megaupload recently, shut down all of its services, seized hundreds of servers and arrested several of its executives on criminal charges.

Do you think the move was justified?