Intel new CPUs and 45nm process...

First and foremost for those who don't know already, I work at Intel in the OPD (Oregon Packagin and Distribution) factory . Today at work we had a meeting on new procedures we'd have to follow, new things to take in, just over-all of "what's coming up and what's going to change." Of these things, was the new Side, Front and Back labels on the boxes. Which, really isn't important, except for this little tid bit...the 45nm boxes are set to be in use by work work 50-52, and new procedures are set to be used at the beginning of work week 7 of next year. Which is interesting because they sampled the 45nm CPU boxes to us; and then talked about the S-Spec, which is the stepping.

This may be a small thing but it gives us a scale of when things will be coming out, and it's very accurate, being as that it is coming from Intel directly. The interesting thing to note though, was how selecting S-Spec is now very different. Traditionally we did FPOs by S-Spec, but now, we combine several S-Specs into one FPO. Which in turn means it's now going to be harder to get a stepping you want (and as if it wasn't already hard enough!!). There's not much more I can disclose, and this is borderline as it is anyways as we agree to a non-disclosure about Intel and what not. But none of this is anything that you couldn't find on the web, the only difference is that I obtained this directly from Intel; which adds to the accuracy of what we can expect to come out soon.

Well hope this jogs some minds out there, I personally was upset with the S-Spec thing though, that ticked me off a bit.