On Wed, 22 May 2002, Jeff Hellige wrote:
  Now that you mentioned that, I took a closer look at
it and it indeed
 has a clear cover over the die.  The white 'ring' around the die in
 the picture is the seal/gasket between it and the clear cover. 
I was starting to wonder how they might have installed that QFP without a
cover. It would be possible to hand solder such a chip, instead of using
an automated hot air system, but hand soldering that size of QFP would not
be an easy task, and there would be a serious risk of flux contamination
of the die. I really haven't seen too many chips that used a clear cover,
and I'd guess they were still debugging/testing that particular chip.
-Toth