Quoted from the interview:
Zardon: Are there any stages after the physical design and driver development?
Eric: Well, there are quite a few stages. A fabrication house will manufacturer silicon wafers, with hundreds of dies on them. The process involved in that creation is complex. But once it’s done, wafer “sorting†is next. In that process, each die is tested and we mark each die with a “all passingâ€, or "dead". The dead ones are discarded. The remaining ones are all packaged, into the chip packages. They are then tested again, in a different tester, and the same three results occur (all good, ½ good, bad). Again, the bad ones are discarded (it’s a very low amount on this sort). The ½ passing dies will end up in the 9500 products, while any 100% passing die will end up in the 9700/9800 products.
With the initial silicon, at this point, we mounted the chips onto boards and spent months verifying all the features and making sure there was no silicon related issues. For the MSAA case I gave above, we actually never did find any problems with our MSAA.
With final silicon, after chip testing, the chips are ready to be mounted onto boards. Once the boards are assembled, they are again tested. There are quite a few tests there, to make sure that those boards are working properly, and up to our stringent quality level.
A lot more here: http://www.driverheaven.net/ericdemers/
Zardon: Are there any stages after the physical design and driver development?
Eric: Well, there are quite a few stages. A fabrication house will manufacturer silicon wafers, with hundreds of dies on them. The process involved in that creation is complex. But once it’s done, wafer “sorting†is next. In that process, each die is tested and we mark each die with a “all passingâ€, or "dead". The dead ones are discarded. The remaining ones are all packaged, into the chip packages. They are then tested again, in a different tester, and the same three results occur (all good, ½ good, bad). Again, the bad ones are discarded (it’s a very low amount on this sort). The ½ passing dies will end up in the 9500 products, while any 100% passing die will end up in the 9700/9800 products.
With the initial silicon, at this point, we mounted the chips onto boards and spent months verifying all the features and making sure there was no silicon related issues. For the MSAA case I gave above, we actually never did find any problems with our MSAA.
With final silicon, after chip testing, the chips are ready to be mounted onto boards. Once the boards are assembled, they are again tested. There are quite a few tests there, to make sure that those boards are working properly, and up to our stringent quality level.
A lot more here: http://www.driverheaven.net/ericdemers/
