27 January 2013
I wanted to have a bit more information for this update, but it looks like I will have to wait until tomorrow to talk to a couple people.
The most important thing I wanted to convey to people at this time was that we have changed our initial "batch" from 12 wafers to 6 wafers, or to be more specific, it's apparently always been 6 with the additional six scheduled for about 1.5 weeks after that. Due to the short time frame between the two, there was a miscommunication as to the actual number of wafers being delivered in the first round. I don't know that this will affect any sort of shipping, since the next set of wafers will be done about when we are ready to start assembly on the first set.
The 6 wafers is actually a good set point for the "first batch" shipping, so the 1/3 plan will be implemented for the first 6 wafers and the remaining wafers will then all be FIFO. The first 6 wafers should cut into the pre-order orderbook by a decent chunk, but it obviously won't satisfy them all. We aren't sure what our yield will be on the wafers, we are running on an 80% yield speculation, but it's likely our yield will be much, much higher than that. With our design, we can have a core in a chip disabled due to dust or what have you and just bump up the other 15 cores to compensate and/or use it for a Jalapeno, so our yield will likely be much closer to 100% than other ASIC projects with more complicated chips.
We should see the bulk of what remains of the 75k chip run about 2 weeks after that, so about the time we are done shipping the other 6 wafers worth we'll have the bulk of our chips arrive and we'll start assembling/shipping those.
The bumping situation is mostly wrapped up at this point, so there should be no problem there. I know there was some talk about the final mask with regards to the bumping and that it may push the date of the chip completion back a couple days, but it shouldn't impact the timeline to speak of as a couple days on either side of the 31st of January shouldn't really make much of difference, being as it's basically a weekend and is in transit anyway. I am hoping to have confirmation with regards to that tomorrow (Monday).
I obviously haven't left for the fab yet, and Mondays call will determine when/if I leave. We have changed our bumping facility from the left coast to the right coast (North Carolina), so we may have the 6 wafers overnighted via courier to the bumping facility vs me picking them up and couriering them myself, although I will be meeting them at the bumping facility and making sure they don't sit around for a couple days while some guy eats and egg salad sandwich and wonders why there's a "priority!" box on his desk.
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