Intel To Debut Limited-Run Ivy Bridge Processor 86
abhatt writes "Intel is set to debut the most power efficient chip in the world — a limited edition 'Ivy Bridge' processor in the upcoming annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Only a select group of tablet and ultrabook vendors will receive the limited Ivy Bridge chips. From the article: 'Intel did not say how far below 10 watts these special "Y" series Ivy Bridge processors will go, though Intel vice president Kirk Skaugen is expected to talk about the processors at CES.
These Ivy Bridge chips were first mentioned at Intel's annual developer conference last year but it wasn't clear at that time if Intel and its partners would go forward with designs. But it appears that some PC vendors will have select models in the coming months, according to Intel.'"
Why not servers? (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to cut the power and heat of NOCs. Why only build these for the junk market of throw way toys?
Re:Why not servers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, why do a limited run at all?
Maybe they get crap yields, or have to do aggressive binning to meet the specs.
Either way it looks like a warning shot to stave off the growth of ARM in server and netbook sectors. "We don't want to serve this market because it would hurt our profits. But, y'know... we could."
Re:Welcome to the new Value Add (Score:5, Insightful)
By a 'fuse' he's talking about the selective factory or post factory programming of a chip.
Intel has only 5 different pieces of silicon serving 150+ different Sandybridge and Sandybridge-E processors, the same is true for Ivybridge.
When the fabrication process is finished, the chips on each wafer are tested for quality. Chips that fail completely are discarded. Chips that have flaws in a core or cache segment will have that core or cache segment disabled disabled. This allows a faulty chip to be sold as a lower end model.
Similarly, if demand for a lower end model is higher than the supply of the lower end models, higher quality chips can have parts disabled so that they may be repackaged as a lower end product for marketing purposes.
All of this is done at the factory before the chip is inserted into a processor package. An additional step invented by IBM allows for firmware upgrades themselves to reprogram the chip, possibly reactivating parts that have been deactivated at the factory, or changing CPU parameters so that older firmware revisions cannot be installed (this is done with the PS3)