Unless your yields are 100% then there always is a financial advantage to selling defective parts that can be transformed into good working products. As people have mentioned, DC processors have been sold as single core, GPU's with defective pipelines are regularly sold as lower end products. It is simply a good business practice to make as little waste as possible.
What was mentioned somewhere before is that Tri-Core could also be 4 working cores, but with one that cannot clock as high as the rest. This provides AMD with the ability to "increase" yields on higher speed units.
EDIT: BTW if anything too, Paul Otellini is just saying that because he wishes Intel C2D was native quad core so they could be doing the same thing. If there was a quad core C2D you can bet your ass Intel would be doing Tri-core. Money is money.
What was mentioned somewhere before is that Tri-Core could also be 4 working cores, but with one that cannot clock as high as the rest. This provides AMD with the ability to "increase" yields on higher speed units.
EDIT: BTW if anything too, Paul Otellini is just saying that because he wishes Intel C2D was native quad core so they could be doing the same thing. If there was a quad core C2D you can bet your ass Intel would be doing Tri-core. Money is money.
This doesn't necessarily mean AMD has this many defective cores. It could be that AMD is disabling the slowest core on some of their processors to have higher speed Quad and Tri cores rather than just slow Quads.
I don't know how to say this enough, because I know everyone's going to assume AMD is having mass problems with their line when they really don't.
I don't know how to say this enough, because I know everyone's going to assume AMD is having mass problems with their line when they really don't.
Triple-core is a double-edged sword, especially since AMD has confirmed that those parts will be salvaged from quads.
Yields increase with time. If the triple-core market is as big as AMD suggests, they'll eventually have to make X3s from perfectly good X4s. If a powerhouse like Dell or HP demands X3s, it's not as if AMD can refuse.
There's a reason why Intel has different masks for different segments: single-core Conroe-L, Allendale, and Conroe. If consumers demand lots of Celeron parts (Conroe-L), Intel doesn't have to dip into the Conroe pool for and affect the supply of C2D or C2Q.
Yields increase with time. If the triple-core market is as big as AMD suggests, they'll eventually have to make X3s from perfectly good X4s. If a powerhouse like Dell or HP demands X3s, it's not as if AMD can refuse.
There's a reason why Intel has different masks for different segments: single-core Conroe-L, Allendale, and Conroe. If consumers demand lots of Celeron parts (Conroe-L), Intel doesn't have to dip into the Conroe pool for and affect the supply of C2D or C2Q.
lopri
Elite Member
- Jul 27, 2002
- 13,314
- 690
- 126
While I understand that this is a wide-spread practice in the chip industry, it definitely reflects where AMD stands today. There isn't a Phenom X4 SKU available in the market yet, and AMD added yet another product which can't be explained by nothing but bad yields to their road-map. I mean, if 1. the die size of X4 was small enough, and 2. yields were good enough, for them to afford, they'd rather cut (or disable, whatever) it into half and sell it as X2 parts instead of doing a last-minute update to their roadmap with such a creative SKU, which is based on currently non-existing SKU (in the market). It could be an interesting product for us enthusiasts, though.
Reading IDF coverage on the front page, I couldn't help but think that AMD's time is ticking unless something miraculous happens.
Reading IDF coverage on the front page, I couldn't help but think that AMD's time is ticking unless something miraculous happens.
The difference between able vs. clueless marketing and product management is a tri-core "product" would be anticipated early on and planned for, given a move to new chip architecture and the 65nm fab process.
If AMD just sprung this upon the users and the OEM partners, then yields aren't going well and won't be improving fast enough. Smart business decision to sell a tri-core cpu, but very poor planning at the very least...
If AMD just sprung this upon the users and the OEM partners, then yields aren't going well and won't be improving fast enough. Smart business decision to sell a tri-core cpu, but very poor planning at the very least...
I agree with serpent on this. It is a brilliant marketing move by amd because most people don't know the difference between RAM and a hard drive and most don't have the time to research and find out that amd is just sodering off a bad core on a chip and since it is three it must be better than two right? and a better value than 4. Also it doesn't hurt amd because they were going to lose money on the chip by throwing it out and instead will probably sell it for a profit. This isn't much different from what intel did with the celeron ds.
Xcobra
Diamond Member
- Oct 19, 2004
- 3,675
- 423
- 126
well it does make sense that if they price it right, then they can take advantage of it, but tell me, if I have dual core already, and do lots of editing and what not, and switching to more cores will help me, then why would i go with three, might as well do four...but youre right, this is the best way to get rid of your "bad" chips...but i personally wouldn't consider it, unless we see how it performs...we'll see
EDIT: in my view, at least in the situation they're in, i see it as a desperate move, but never said it was a bad one...
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