Waxxon
Lordim
Short version:
Nvidia won’t release a secret stash of units because there is no secret stash. And if they did they are stupid cause either they are skimping on quality or they did have a stash and they think their customers are stupid enough to be lied to so boldly and people will still buy their stuff.
I get what you're saying but counterpoint: What if nvidia was asking resellers to build stock for a few weeks while letting a few cards trickle out, then open the flood gates? E-tailers might actually have stock that lasts more than a few minutes and get cards into people's hands. That might get them some good will. These drops that are gone in 1-2 minutes are what is pissing people off the most.
I see your point. However I work as a Fab Operator. And we make lots of different chips that go into different stuff can give you exact details due to NDA, and as a lowly operator they don’t specifically tell use exactly what each die does.
But I can say we make stuff that goes into cars, medical equipment, phones, and loads more.
But enough about that. I can tell you we have stuff on the shelves from months ago, that’s not because we don’t want to get it out of the FAB.
It’s because some stuff is just slow moving either due to quality concerns, or some tools take a whole day or longer to run it and it’s better to run it with a full batch of 100 wafers than run 25 and waste chemical, and hold up 6 other products that could have ram faster or at a higher batch.
Suffice to say it takes time. We had a special Lot come in and our goal was to run it through the Fab ASAP. And consider we operate 24/7 it took 9 days to do it.
Now that was apparently from what our higher ups claim was a very fast and we have set a gold standard with that timeframe for that particular product.
They expected us to take 30 days on that lot.
Some product gets looked at after every step to ensure quality is top notch, Or if it has yield concerns, which in turn slows down how long it takes to get product out of the facility.
And after it leaves our facility it goes to another country to be cut and then final testing.
Now I don’t work for Samsung or Nvidia but if they claim low yield is a issue playing into why their is not a huge amount of stock. I will most definitely believe it.
Because we have loads of stuff in place to make sure everything else is right so that if their is a issue with the product it’s so easy to know if the design needs to be tweaked. Considering this isn’t 12nm it’s 8nm I think. Pretty new, I can think of 5 things that play a factor into low yield.
Training workers on new equipment or new process
New die size means design may need some tweaking to ensure it’s going to not only work but work a long time.
(Not to put quality into question) but simply that the design isn’t yielding consistent results.
Calibration of tools to run the design, and in extension to recalibrate if the design needs tweaking.
Recipes take long time to run and when you factor in calibration if it turns out the recipe doesn’t have the exact needed effect. (Very complicated to explain but rest assured their are trained people who can inspect and determine if it needs tweaking and how much then if the product that was run already can be run again or if it gets scrapped.)
Then external things going on that make it so either a Fab is shut down or has to cutback in operations or other things as well. Considering Covid and knowing my work has had some downtime not because we wanted it but because our facility we send our stuff to for final cutting and testing was shut down and we were sitting on
Weeks upon weeks of product that we had to shut down.
Their is so much that goes into making microchips if anyone is sitting on Nvidia 3080 or 3090 stuff it’s Samsung... and it’s unfinished product. Or maybe they have stuff they finished but it needs to be moved on but is stagnant due to Covid and or other things. (Difficulties sending stuff to other countries.)
You see “low yield” and that seems strange maybe for multiple reasons.
I see “low yield” and I have a flashback of a bad day at work.
Short version is:
I’m attempting a short version:
Yes tweaking design and calibrating tools should already be figured out by now.
But their is still so much crap that goes into yield of microchips even for old tech. New die size only makes it more complicated.
post edited by Lordim - 2020/10/22 19:34:41