Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

19 Nov 2001

It was easy to buy into but, it wasn't supported by research.
I was with NEC at that time and Dram was one of the hot
products and they were pretty good at it.  Tyrns out the gold
braze for the lid and the gold based eutectic for the die bond
were the real source and it was Alpha particles (most easily
stopped) as a primary source of "soft" errors.  Since then tricks
like memory scrubbing in ECC systems and better controls
on charge refresh have burried the problem even though the
features are several orders smaller.  That very smaller means
less charge and there for more problems but it also means
a smaller target meaning a more likely miss.

In 1981 it translated to you had to have a lot of chips, running
for a long time to get a radiation induced soft error and even then
parity or better yet ECC was the way out.  In the end, not a
problem for most systems.

Really interesting if your into statistics and probability.

Allison

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher &lt;edick(a)idcomm.com&gt;
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
Date: Monday, November 19, 2001 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY

...
 I don't remember that explanation, though I guess
it could be plausible. What I
...
 remember reading was that, since western Colorado and
eastern Utah, where they
...
 were getting some of their materials was also an area
of relatively high
concentration of radioactive minerals, which certainly lines up with the 1950's
...
 activity in uranium prospecting/mining in that area. 
It was easy for me to buy
...
 into during that period.  The problem was found in
almost all ceramic packages
...
 made from materials acquired in that part of the
country, so it seemed
reasonable enough.  It doesn't matter now, of course.

Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Allison" &lt;ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net&gt;
To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 10:24 AM
Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY

> Not quite true.
>
> The Dram problem was one of those "we knew it was comming" due
> to shrinking geometry items.  The source of the radiation was the Gold
> eutectic braze.  The specific radiation was alpha particles.  FYI the
> solution was organic based die overcoat.  Testing for the phenomina was
> undertaken to verify and analyze the phenomina by NEC,IBM and MOTO
> (to name a few) using initally small  geometry 16k single voltage (i2118
> style) parts.
>
> FYI: the coors ceramic parts were morecostly due to the gold!  They
> however were better for hermetic performance than slab with glass frit
> sealed packages.
>
> Allison
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Erlacher &lt;edick(a)idcomm.com&gt;
> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
> Date: Monday, November 19, 2001 11:00 AM
> Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>
>
> >Back in the early days of 64k DRAMs, the COORS ceramics were described as
...
 > having
> >too much radioactivity for use in high-density memories.  I'm not sure
that
...
 > was,
> >in fact, the case, but somebody seems to have thought so.  Do you suppose
...
 > they
> >fixed that?  Coors was a leader, in the '60's in porcelain tooling and
> other
> >such oddities, not to mention having "perfected" the draw-and-iron
process
...
 > for
> >making thin-walled aluminum beverage cans.
> >
> >Dick
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Douglas Quebbeman" &lt;dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com&gt;
> >To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
> >Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 7:37 AM
> >Subject: RE: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
> >
> >
> >> > It's very late run ceramic.  Ceramic for chip substrates only
comes
> from a
> >> > few vendors one being a beer maker in the rockies a few in the far
east
...
   and
   >
Europe.

 heh... actually, Adolph Coors spun-off its non-brewery assets in 1992
 into ACX Technologies, and most recently, CoorsTek (formerly Coors
 Ceramics) was spun-off into a wholly separate company on Jan 1, 2000.

 -dq