Zambezi ES performance weirdness

[RussC]

Based on this conversation I have a feeling nobody here is in the semiconductor business, so let me try to explain it to you.

We don't even do any real performance analysis until we get the final silicon. Prior to that, we are totally focused on design validation.

Performance is determined based on the following:

1. The processor
2. The processor microcode
3. The BIOS
4. The Operating system
5. The drivers
6. The compiler code

Actually, I do work in the industry, and I believe one of our etchers is in one of your fabs.

With that said, You don't mean that the engineers that designed the processor dont have some idea of performance before final silicon? Um, that makes no sense to me! So AMD has no idea of where the BD cores stack up against competitors before final silicon, I have a hard time believing that.

RussC