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From: rik@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Rik Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: 486SX
Message-ID: <1991May7.142850.18042@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 7 May 91 14:28:50 GMT
References: <1991May2.212247.12525@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> <3645@borg.cs.unc.edu> <1991May03.160136.6267@convex.com>
Reply-To: rik.harris@monash.edu.au
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Organization: Monash University, Caulfield Campus
Lines: 35

swarren@convex.com (Steve Warren) writes:

>In article <3645@borg.cs.unc.edu> cullip@sargent.cs.unc.edu (Timothy Cullip) writes:
>>I don't want to start an "I hate Intel thread" here, but I just can't
>>resist giving my impressions of the 486SX.  Intel sells the standard
>>486DX chip for about $500.  The SX is in fact a DX, but with the floating
>>point unit turned off (i.e. it's on the chip, but disabled so it's just 
>>as expensive to produce) but sells it for about $250. Kind of gives you 
>>an idea of the profit margin on the DX.

>I know this is hard for you to believe, but a major portion of the expense of
>a hyper-integrated chip (>1million gates) like the 486DX is the testing and
>the scrap costs.  Any 486DX chips that passed the integer diagnostics but had
>a flaw in the FP unit are going in the trash unless they can be sold as a
>486SX.

I don't want to be quoted here, but I was under the belief that there
was a bug in the original 80486 that caused any 'sin' or 'cos'
operation to crash the chip, or at least give the wrong answer.  They
have started producing a corrected 80486, but now they have all the old
80486's with a faulty FP unit, so they would be probably where the SX's
come from.

[this hardly belong here...followups redirected]
>            _.
>--Steve   ._||__      DISCLAIMER: All opinions are my own.
>  Warren   v\ *|     ----------------------------------------------
>             V       {uunet,sun}!convex!swarren; swarren@convex.com
>--
rik.
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