Yields are under 2% - WTF?

Ok so I was checking the logs today to see who has been reading Ninjalane today and noticed a new(ish) site linking to our recent Corsair Ice T30 review.  Being the good editor I started rooting around and found this article talking about the new GT300.

How many worked out of the (4 x 104) 416 candidates? Try 7. Yes, Northwood was hopelessly optimistic - Nvidia got only 7 chips back. Let me repeat that, out of 416 tries, it got 7 'good' chips back from the fab. Oh how it must yearn for the low estimate of 20%, talk about botched execution. To save you from having to find a calculator, that is (7 / 416 = .01682), rounded up, 1.7% yield.

So you have to ask yourself. 

If yields are so bad why would nVidia release that information?  Furthermore why is this even news?  Everyone knows that when a new chip process is being developed that there are going to be roadblocks and unless these roadblocks continue to be a problem it won't have any impact on anything.

Given that nVision is scheduled to happen in a couple weeks it is our guess that a rival company opted to leak the information in hopes of giving nVida some bad press. in fact it wouldn't be the first time something like this happened.  Almost every year AMD hires a plane to fly a banner over the IDF conference just as everyone is headed out for lunch.  Ironically enough IDF happens around the same time.

Coincidence??  Hardly…

Related Web URL: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/09/15/nvidia-gt30...