Rightisright
Banned
A post was made on another forum, whos name escapes me, asking Albert Penello an interesting question.
The question was
"
Could you answer this for me.
When you were working on the one X, and it was 12 months before release, if Bill Gates walked in and said " Hey guys, I want you to wack on 4 more compute units", just how much time and cost are we talking about to just chuck on some more Cu's?
Would you have plenty of time to make the launch date? What sort of things would you need to crash test the GPU for by adding said Cu's?
Thanks muchly."
Alberts reply was interesting.
"
It would be impossible. You'd either delay the program, try and see what you could get done within the chip you had (enable redundant CU's or upclock) or ship what you have.
I'm not a silicon engineer. Someone who is may be able to speak in more depth. My experience would say that "adding CU's" to a chip that doesn't have them is no longer that chip, it's a new program.
What I can tell you is that 12 months before release, you're actually manufacturing consoles. Not final consoles, but you have production lines going and are manufacturing units for validation and testing.
Phil tweeted in December that the team had takeome units. Those are pre-production units but "pre-production" is still made on a production line. It may not be using all the final parts, but the process is designed to work out manufacturing kinks.
To ship for the end of the year, manufacturing is likely starting in late summer which at this point is only 4 - 5 months away."
The question was
"
Could you answer this for me.
When you were working on the one X, and it was 12 months before release, if Bill Gates walked in and said " Hey guys, I want you to wack on 4 more compute units", just how much time and cost are we talking about to just chuck on some more Cu's?
Would you have plenty of time to make the launch date? What sort of things would you need to crash test the GPU for by adding said Cu's?
Thanks muchly."
Alberts reply was interesting.
"
It would be impossible. You'd either delay the program, try and see what you could get done within the chip you had (enable redundant CU's or upclock) or ship what you have.
I'm not a silicon engineer. Someone who is may be able to speak in more depth. My experience would say that "adding CU's" to a chip that doesn't have them is no longer that chip, it's a new program.
What I can tell you is that 12 months before release, you're actually manufacturing consoles. Not final consoles, but you have production lines going and are manufacturing units for validation and testing.
Phil tweeted in December that the team had takeome units. Those are pre-production units but "pre-production" is still made on a production line. It may not be using all the final parts, but the process is designed to work out manufacturing kinks.
To ship for the end of the year, manufacturing is likely starting in late summer which at this point is only 4 - 5 months away."