On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 12:08:46PM +0000, Ed Spittles wrote: > On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 at 11:54, Baltissen, GJPAA (Ruud) <ruud.baltissen_at_apg.nl> > wrote: > > > > Though they changed the masks which was expensive > > > > I can see only one reason: the result saved money in some way, enough to > > justify the costs. > > > > Perhaps only one mask changed, which is a lower cost than changing all. As > it changes the bond pads, it just might have been necessary because of some > change to the bonding or packaging process. Or, it improved yield, which > as you say, saves money. Or, just possibly, it improved reliability, with > the same result. Yes, and you have to have new masks after a while *anyway*, for normal wear and tear, so it is easy to slip in something low-risk like a pad metallisation improvement at the same time. > > - they didn't want to introduce new part numbers. > > > > If a factory had to change the type number of a car for every small change > > during production, then we had to get customed to something like Ford Focus > > T394. > > > > If the chip behaves the same logically, perhaps there's less of confusion > in not bumping the revision number. It's not uncommon to distinguish major > and minor revisions, although I see no other revision counters on the die. It's functionally the exact same chip, even. SegherReceived on 2020-05-30 00:29:21
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