Nvidia 55nm Parts Are Bad Too

JagsLive sends in a story (in somewhat inflammatory prose) from The Inquirer, which links to many others; they have been following developments in the alleged NVidia quality "fiasco" for some time. "Hot on the heels of its denials that anything is wrong with the G92 and G94s comes another PCN [Product Change Notification] that shows the G92s and G92b are being changed for no reason. Yup, the problems that are plaguing G84 and G86 are the same that affect seemingly all 65nm and now 55nm NVidia parts ... It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm NVidia part appears to be defective ... We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens percent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs ... To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting ... Until NVidia comes fully clean on this fiasco, lists all the defective parts, and orders boxes clearly marked, you can't say anything other than just avoid them. Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen."

Comments

Charlie Demerjian

[Qhartb]

I stopped reading when I got to "By Charlie Demerjian."

Seriously, this guy is to NVIDIA as Jack Thompson is to video games. It's just not as common knowledge that you shouldn't take him seriously.

Re:Still Not Buying It

[Curien]

They say failure rates are "in the teens percent". Figure 20%, just for kicks. That means your chances of either card failing is 1 - (1 - .2)(1 - .2) = 36%.

For some reason that I don't understand, the vast majority of people have innate misconceptions of the rules of probability.

Re:Lead-based solders 3 years after RoHS deadline?

[XanC]

I would say it's because lead-based solder actually works properly, but according to this story that doesn't seem likely to be their motivation.

Re:Fair and Balanced?

[AcidPenguin9873]

The person who submitted this story to Slashdot left out an important link on that text from the original Inquirer article (linked again here for your convenience). In the original story, that sentence reads:

Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen.

At that link, you'll find The Inquirer's (however flimsy and speculative) financial analysis of a full-scale Nvidia recall of the bad parts.

The Inquirer doesn't and has never claimed to be a fair and balanced news source, so they are free to put these sorts of quips on their stories. People there are pretty knowledgeable, and appear to have connections and sources in the industry, which is why people keep reading The Inquirer and don't really complain about stuff like that.

Re:Pizza

[Dogtanian]

I remember reading something not entirely dissimilar in Robert X Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds". Might or might not be apocryphal; I don't have the book to hand. Apparently Intel (IIRC) were having problems. The amount of defective parts they were getting was going through the roof, and they were pulling their hair out trying to get to the root of the problem.

Finally they traced it down to the guy responsible for receiving the deliveries of the silicon wafers. Apparently he was taking out the wafers and putting them down in his desk- quite dusty and very definitely *not* up to clean room standards!- to make sure Intel was getting what they'd paid for.

Re:Lead-based solders 3 years after RoHS deadline?

[Tycho]

Yes there is an exception in RoHS for lead solder that has a high melting point. However, the official RoHS rule is that while lead solders in general are prohibited, there is an exception allowing for the use of lead solder that contains at least 90% lead. The idea being that solder with at least 90% lead melted at a higher temperature and was at least somewhat safer if disposed of improperly. Otherwise, potentially there may also have been no replacements for high lead content solders that performed as well when the first RoHS directives were drawn up in 2003. Currently (2008), however, there are lead-free solders that would work, but the lead free solders are more expensive than lead based solders (by roughly three times). Using a lead-free solder with a significantly different composition may also require a new packaging design and another extensive round of qualification, too. I am not totally sure how this would be done.

It get worse, the new solder to be used by nVidia mentioned in this Inq article states that it will only contain 63% lead and 37% tin, making nVidia based cards with this solder not saleable to consumers in the EU according to RoHS directives. The replacement 63Pb/37Sn solder has a somewhat better tensile strength and a lower coefficient of thermal expansion than the older 95Pb/5Sn solder, which may be why nVidia chose this route to fix the problem. Whether nV will be selling very many products in the EU with this fix and whether this will correct the problems, is another issue.