Nvidia chipsets are defective too

Bumpgate: Only 630, 7050, 7100 and 7150 changed for no reason

Nvidia world iconEditors Note: From time to time, SemiAccurate will be republishing some older articles by its authors, some with additional commentary, updates and information.  We are mainly reprinting some of the oft referenced articles that originally appeared on the Inquirer. Some will have added content, but all will be re-edited from the originals as per contractual obligations. You may see some slight differences between the two versions.

This article has had some of the original links removed, and was published on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 5:50PM.

LOOKS LIKE THOSE wacky folk at Nvidia are at it again, changing perfectly good chipsets for no reason. If you recall, they changed the G86 parts and the G92/G92b as well, for no reason.

Luckily, they seem to be spending money like there is no tomorrow, it has nothing to do with the fact that they have a few warehouses full of defective chips, they seem to want to keep their validation engineers fully employed this time of year for no apparent reason. This time, the chipsets being changed are being done ‘just because’, and the bump material has nothing to do with cards crapping out. Really. This, this and this are vague guesses.

So, with that, we bring you word of the next PCN, this time for chipsets, or ‘motherboard GPUs’ if you are terminally stupid enough to believe the marketing hype. Because this one is no different from the other two PCNs linked above, we will skip the detailed description and just bring you the pertinent details. Should you want the formatting, it is still here.

This little ditty is called “MCP73 Products Change Bump Material from High Pb Solder to Eutectic Solder”, and is confidential, NDA’d, and has a June 2008 date. The PCN # for the pedantic is PCN0353A. Nothing new there.

Page 2 has a more exact date of June 13, 2008, with a PCN submit date of June 13, 2008 as well. Planned Implementation Date is July 25, 2008, and Proposed First Ship Date for change is August 17, 2008. This means that the parts should be hitting the shelves about now, so if you want to buy a low performance MCP, you can buy in moderate safety now. It is still a Class 1 change.

The list of the affected parts are NF-630I-A2, NF-7050-610I-A2, NF-7050-620I-A2, NF-7050-630I-A2, NF-7100-630I-A2 and NF-7150-630I-A2. It looks like this is an admission that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the 630, 7050, 7100 and 7150, they just are changing them just because. No need to panic, really.

Page 3 has the same diagram as the G92 PCN, and the same reasoning, to enhance package robustness. I guess they can’t use the term failure, defect, or crib death in a PCN. Odd really. In any case, the qual data is available now, with samples going out on July 18, 2008. Eutectic bump products will be marked with a trailing R on the lot #, but no box marking for underfill this time.

This PCN ends on a humorous note. There are two different dates, a generic June, and June 13, both 2008, earlier in the PCN. On the page 4, they have 7/11/08 listed for Revision A, the initial release. Come on guys, a little proofreading here and there wouldn’t kill you. It would kill us, but you guys have the pretense of professionalism.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate