12mo ago

AMD delays its Ryzen 9000 launch due to unspecified quality issue — new launch in August; chipmaker pulls back all units shipped globally for quality checks

www.tomshardware.com

AMD delays its Ryzen 9000 launch due to unspecified quality issue — new launch in August; chipmaker pulls back all units shipped globally for quality checks [Updated]

31 comments

Makes sense for two reasons: They show everyone that they don't push faulty hardware, unlike intel and they also delay the launch until after intel push their microcode update to 'fix' their high-end models, which will reduce performance. Ryzen 9000 will look even better in day one performance comparisons.
- I’ve been following the Intel story closely. Watched the Gamers Nexus vids. Did I miss it or has it been reported that microcode updates will definitely degrade performance?
  
  It's not confirmed. Its just pessimism, albeit very well argued and precedented.
  
  Voltages are probably too high. With lower voltages they very likely won't be able to hit the same clockspeeds.
Intel announces two generations of defective processors and AMD gives up that opportunity to recall their own launch? Must be something very wrong with the batch.
- I'd say it's actually a better market signal rather than indications of huge problems. "See, our competitiors send out defective products; we are holding back to make sure ours ship correctly."
  That's exactly what enterprise/datacenter customers want to hear: a dedication to stability.
  
  Nah something fishy
Unspecified quality, that's an issue.
Would be nice for AMD to say what is the specific problem. They chose to recall, there must be something concrete to say.
- They did. Its in the article.
  A company representative told Tom’s Hardware that the issue doesn’t require a redesign or re-spin of the Ryzen 9000 silicon and will not result in changes to the already-defined specifications for the various models. AMD will re-screen the chips pulled from the field to identify any with potential issues and then return unaffected models to retail channels. This indicates that not all chips suffer from the issue.
  An AMD representative told us that the company “identified an issue with our package product testing process for Ryzen 9000 series processors that could result in a small number of products reaching the market that do not meet our quality standards.” AMD specifically cited the package testing process, implying that the issue resides in the packaging implementation (more on that below).
  It says nothing is wrong with the silicon. I appears to be a problem in some units where the silicon die is mated with the materials that hold it (fiberglass PCB or its interconnects).
  
  While annoying, that’s absolutely less of a showstopper than discovering a lithography issue like ~~big blue~~ (that’s IBM) Intel has discovered (and who knows exactly how long ago they knew about the oxidization issues)
  
  It sounds like the issue is specifically with the testing process. Possibly they didn't test some of the packages properly and accidentally shipped out yield defects like missing memory channels, when they normally would have been scrapped at the factory.
  
  Notice how you said "a problem with" and the article said "implying that". There is some ambiguity. The issue is narrowed down but still not explicit. Hopefully we will get even more specifics later.

31 comments