5 Nov
2010
5 Nov
'10
2:52 a.m.
Teo Zenios wrote:
I don't believe that it was anywhere near 1.1 grams; in fact I believe
that is wrong by more than an order of magnitude. There was no reason
to put that much gold into the thing, even when gold was at 25% of its
current price. It's not a matter of what would have bankrupted Intel;
if the cost of using gold in the package had been $10, they probably
could have found a less expensive package, such as kovar/nickel.
While the Pentium Pro's cavity lid is large, the gold plating on the
kovar is *very* thin. Typically 50 microinches. The lid is around two
square inches, so the total gold is about 0.032 grams, which is around
0.001 troy oz, or about $1.40 worth of gold at today's prices. My
estimate might not be terribly accurate, but I don't think it's off by a
factor of 30.
There were some Pentium Pro chips sold in the >$500 range, but others
were in the $150-200 range, and the packaging was identical.
The people claiming that there is $45 in gold in a Pentium Pro must be
trying to unload Pentium Pros.
Eric
From the wiki:
"Some models of Pentium Pro chips contain as much as 1.1 grams of
Gold. Because gold's price has increased more than 500% since 1995,
the price of the gold in one of these chips has gone from $8.25 to
close to $45 per chip."
Which models I don't know. Original price per chip must have been over
$1000, so $10 in gold would not have bankrupted Intel.