What does "cB0 or cC0 stepping" mean?

[butch84]

I have seen this when looking about posts regarding processors. Can somebody clue me in?

 

[Wingznut]

I'm lazy, so I'm just going to steal one of pm's posts.

"A stepping is a revision of silicon - to be more precise it refers to a change to the mask used to manufacture the chip. This change can for any number of different reasons: to improve bin split (frequency), to fix errata (ie. bugs), to improve yield, to solve an electrical issue and other misc. reasons.

Intel defines steppings in two forms. A letter change is a change to the complete set of masks. A number change only refers to a subset of the masks. So, A1 -> A2 is a change to just a few layers (usually metal), while B0 -> C0 is a change to all layers.

IMO, the most important point to remember about steppings is that you shouldn't mix them in a SMP (multi-processor) system.If you have one 733MHz Pentium III cB0 CPU, and you want to add in another to make a dual-processor setup, then I strongly recommend getting another 733MHz Pentium III cB0, and not putting in a 733MHz Pentium III cA2 or a cC0 instead."