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From: zben@umd5.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Cube designs vs. x,y,z bus
Message-ID: <342@umd5.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Feb-85 01:02:04 EST
Article-I.D.: umd5.342
Posted: Mon Feb 25 01:02:04 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Feb-85 01:16:00 EST
References: <48@pbear.UUCP> <268@oliveb.UUCP>
Reply-To: zben@umd5.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Organization: U of Md, CSC, College Park, Md
Lines: 19
Summary: Minor quibble about IC physical manufacture 

In article <268@oliveb.UUCP> jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) writes:
> ...  If the entire wafer of
>silicon was used then the wasted area used for cutting the chips apart
>could be eliminated.  ...   

Well, until they start growing REALLY perfect silicon crystals in zero-gee
(if in fact that is the real problem with growing perfect crystals)
you would still have to deal with yield here.  I suspect 60-75% yield on
as complex a circuit as a microprocessor would be pretty good for the
current state of the art (any flames?).

So you might have to burn a map of the good processors into the chip after
testing, like those Intel mag bubble chips...  

Network routing algorithms, anyone?   ;-)


-- 
Ben Cranston        ...seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!umd5!zben    zben@umd2.ARPA