Reason for shortgage in Coppermines

[lupin]

From the register:
"According to Japanese sources, a sliver of ceramic used to make Coppermine chips run at the right speed is still in short supply. "

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/11807.html

Maybe the shortgage in coppermines is not caused by yield problems, but shortgage in parts that's needed to build the CPU.

The question is, doesn't the Athlon need the same parts also?? After all, they're both microprocessors. The idea behind it might be different, but the physical structure should be the same right?

 

[SocrPlyr]

no the problem w/ the supply from my take is not that they pushed the core up in speed soo fast w/o/ having the facilities to create enough chips
pretty much people w/ p2s are thinking wow look how fast they are now and are upgrading creating more demand etc and there are soo many different speeds that they are just draining supplies

 

[Midnight Rambler]

The shortage in Cumines has never been about yields, the low end speeds have been the scarcest. It was about total manufacturing capacity (ie. they were selling every chip they could make) and also these packaging component supplies, one of which is the one the Register is talking about. The supplier is either ASE or Flip Chip Technologies (which licensed its product to ASE). If AMD used the same packaging technology, then they would have the same problem, but I don't know if they did.