News - A peek under the Intel Core i7 -5960X Integrated Heat Spreader

[HEXUS]

De-lidding reveals conductive epoxy Thermal Interface Material (TIM).

Read more.

[watercooled]

That's some fairly dramatic die harvesting! I wonder if the 6 core versions will be native 6 core dies?

Epoxy!=solder though. My experience with thermal epoxy shows it to be fairly similar to TIM in thermal performance but very much more permanent.

[Corky34]

There does seem to be a lot of confusion over whether it's an epoxy or a solder.

[watercooled]

It looks more like epoxy/TIM to me, going by the included image.

Edit: The source article says

soldered the chip’s die to the IHS with a strong epoxy

Which is a bit like saying 'screwed together with a staple' - they're two fundamentally different bonding techniques. But I guess something is just lost in translation.

Epoxy uses epoxy resin which cures through a chemical process. Soldering uses a metal alloy which is heated to make it fluid, and sets by cooling.

[Thorburn]

That's some fairly dramatic die harvesting! I wonder if the 6 core versions will be native 6 core dies?

Epoxy!=solder though. My experience with thermal epoxy shows it to be fairly similar to TIM in thermal performance but very much more permanent.

Ivy Bridge-E had 12-core and 6-core die variants, so 4960X was a native 6-core, whilst the 4820K was die harvested. I'd guess they are going the same way with Haswell-E since they are on the same process node.

By contrast Sandy Bridge-E was 4 and 8-core variants, so the 3960X was an 8-core, die harvested part and the 3820 was a native 4-core.

[watercooled]

It's nothing terribly unusual, I was just passing comment; it's not a very high-volume part after all.

However, I half-expected a native 8 or 10 core die for Haswell-E considering we had:
SNB-E: 4, 8
IVB-E: 6, 10, 15 (the 12C is actually a 15C die IIRC)
But HSW-E is now 6??, 12, ??? - see what I mean?

Assuming there is a smaller die than 12C in HSW-E, this would imply it's a 6C, which is a big jump from 12 cores.

The IVB-E cores were arranged in columns, so the 10C die was similar to the 15C with one side sliced off, and with the 6C being arranged slightly differently. Time for some complete speculation; looking at the picture in the article, the HSW-E die looks very much like the three-column 15C IVB-E die. With one of those columns sliced off, you'd have an 8C die (assuming it's designed that way OFC).

However something else has just occurred to me, IVB-EX 15C was already 541mm2 i.e. massive (and probably not too far off reticle size), and Haswell cores are larger than IVB. People are talking about 18C dies, but how big a die would that mean?? Even looking at the picture, that die is seriously huge; I'm not sure how much room there is left under the heatspreader for another 6 cores + cache!

It will be interesting to watch this, for sure...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like he destroyed the chip.

[letsrace567]

Looks like he destroyed the chip.

That was my thought. Looks like delidding a 5960X wouldn't be such a good idea because of the much stronger TIM.

[watercooled]

Reminds me of this: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=1#post4484701

It's fascinating how the split die looks so similar to the publicised die shots!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That was my thought. Looks like delidding a 5960X wouldn't be such a good idea because of the much stronger TIM.

Well the chip has come off the PCB.

[Mosfetv]

That's epoxy.It's sad to see that they don't use solder anymore.

[Laststop]

rly shady of intel. I bet the solder is like 50 cents more expensive per chip and they are greedy as hell. I'm sure people wouldn't mind paying the extra cost in the purchase price to get solder. Nothing conducts heat better than actual real metal.