Very early FC-PGA S370 Celeron ?

[xsecret]

I recently found this very strange Celeron ES.

Never saw this marking (white "Celeron"). It's also very early: April 99 while the common FCPGA Celeron ES are dated Nov/Dec 99 (for a March 2000 launch). Even the Socket 370 Pentium III has been announced in October 99.

The die is too small to be 0.25µm but doesn't look like a Coppermine. There is no caps on back. Maybe a Thermal Sample ? But I don't know why they marked it as "Celeron". Or some early pre-Timna attempt ?

It's a total mystery for me. Any guess?

[Birdman.]

Measure die size, looks like Coppermine die rotated 90 degrees to me. Maybe it's just Coppermine in different early package.

[H3nrik V!]

Wow!

Funny, by the way, that the 533MHz ES doesn't have 533"A"MHz

Edit: Or is that just the way it is in the part number?

[rjluna2]

Looks like the Intel Confidential sample is made on the 17th week of 1999

[bccwchan]

I like the Intel Confidential Celeron. Looks really coool.

[bccwchan]

BTW, do you test the Intel Confidential cpu?

[Katmai500]

That's a really interesting one.

I've got a Pentium III sample that looks similar to this. QF06ES manufactured Week 08, 2000. So Intel was playing around with this odd Socket 370 layout for quite a while.

[H3nrik V!]

Apparently, this is a new Q-spec, you should post it in the thread for new S-Specs.

[CPUShack]

Being a RB80526PY000000 this is most likelya thermal/mech sample, quite nice

[xsecret]

Very interesting. The traces on substrate are almost the same than on mine but yours has been built ~one year later.

The SKU helps a lot : we're now almost sure it's some kind of dummy sample. Probably a thermal sample.

[Katmai500]

The more I looked at these I noticed something. They seem to match the look of the FC-PGA2 package, but without the heat spreader. They have the smoother finish and lack the grid of little squares on top. Does anyone have a photo of an FC-PGA2 with the heatspreader removed? I wonder which direction the die is aligned underneath?