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Chapter 9: Yield, Testing, and Binning

Why chips from the same wafer are not all equal

The basic logic of yield

Yield is the fraction of manufactured chips that become usable products. Defect density, die area, process window, and design redundancy shape yield together. A large GPU die has a higher chance of encountering random defects, so it depends heavily on mature process control, redundancy, and careful design margins.

The test chain

Wafer sort identifies candidate known-good-die before expensive packaging. After packaging, products still need functional test, speed test, memory-link test, power test, burn-in, and temperature screening. In a GPU plus HBM module, a failure in one die or one link can affect the entire assembly.

Why binning matters

Binning sorts chips by frequency, voltage, power, enabled-unit count, and stability. Some GPUs can disable defective or marginal compute units and ship at a lower specification. Binning recovers borderline silicon and lets a product line cover different power and price points.

References

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