Date: 01/07/07 (Computer Geeks) Keywords: web Someone gave a ticked-off response to the computer build pics that I posted. It was in a forum that's not as active as this one so I didn't think it would cause any uproar there either (that forum had no rules listed in the userinfo). I was not-exactly-cordially asked to show what I can do and not what I can buy. I'm posting this just in case someone here was equally bothered by the photos of my computer. It's a hobby. Goodness' sakes. Something reared it's ugly head, I suppose. Oh well. Well, since you asked- My office is on the 6th floor of the SC12 design building in Santa Clara, California, at Intel's headquarters. You can see the front of the building in one of these photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49617622@N I am a microprocessor mask layout designer working in the central standard cell library design team. The projects I have worked on over the last six years (7th year sabbatical eligibility is in March): Timna (integrated processor- AMD was not the first to implement such a thing. Intel had it on the production line and simply shelved it. It was cancelled) Montecito (IA-64) Banias (first Pentium M. I had the inverter family, which was the highest usage family in the library. That means a large portion of the logic was covered by my cells. Relatively easy work, but important work) Dothan (Pentium M, I only did minor verification work) Prescott iteration of P4 Tejas iteration of P4 (cancelled, and it was already taped out. In a way it was kind of discouraging since I did a ton of work and I trained two people for it too, but in retrospect it was definitely the right move for Intel to make) Merom (Core 2, essentially same derivation for Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest. Can't say any more than that) Penryn (Merom shrink) Nehalem (I can mention the name because it's already been printed over the web) Westmere, Gesher (They've also been mentioned. I wonder who in the world are leaking these things... A lot of the times I don't even know what in the world I'm working on exactly. I just worry about the physical layout design of the devices and paths after being handed the schematics. Two months ago I was given the opportunity to work on some fub level stuff so I saw much more circuit on my screen. That wasn't very fun... those fub-level people can keep their jobs and I can keep mine, thanks much. Maybe I'll occasionally go on rotation but there's no way I'm transferring to a fub layout team. Ironically I get more info on our projects from the internet than from inside the company. Then again, a lot of the rumors they print are ridiculous and amusing- The nVidia merger, for example. That reminded me of the April Fools joke they had on the company intranet site about the Apple merger) By the way, regarding "how much money"... I didn't exactly spend a whole lot, since the E6700 is an engineering sample that the company loaned me. I wouldn't have bothered building a machine if I have to actually buy the chip. As for the rest, they're bargain components. The keyboard for example was only $14, the monitor $240 (recently dropped to $210), the graphics card $169 (recently dropped a whopping $20 to $149), the power supply I got for free after rebate (which is why it isn't giving enough voltage and I have to get a replacement if I don't want something to break), the speaker/case/soundcard was around $35 each. These systems could generally be built for under $1000, and I think people know that. Yes, it took a lot of work- to research for the lowest prices on the best parts for the performance/value metric. It's true that any Joe off the street could have gotten something big with a big budget, but it did take work and some workarounds (The 7.1 was really a "5.1+2") to get it relatively inexpensively. Again, this is a hobby project, something to amuse myself with on evenings and weekends away from my job. I hope this clarifies things. I forgot to mention a project that I worked on during Nehalem timeframe. I can't mention the name though since I don't see it printed anywhere. On another note, I have heard of Larabee discussed inside the company. I don't know much about it though. What I have heard I can't say either. Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/1020107.html
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