Pentium Pro Die Cover Print - one-line vs two-line ?

[Neology]

Finally got a chance to clean up my collection and take photos progressively through my collection.

I've found something interesting with Pentium Pro with its print on the die cover: Some of my PPros have two lines of code printed on the die cover while some have only one line. See SY048 photos attached.

For one-line version, I assume it is just the product date and serial number of the die; For two lines I assume one is for the core and the other is for the cache.

By looking at the production date, it seems all early productions have two lines printed on the die cover and late productions have only one. And it is the case for both samples and retail versions

Going through all my PPro collection, I've found:
In retail version, latest production date with two lines die code print is made in 1996 week 29(SY048) and the earliest with one line print is 1996 week 38(SU104) for retail PPro;
In samples, the latest two-line print is 1996 week 24 and the earliest one-line print is 1996 week 43.

So I think the cut-over date should be between 1996 week 29 and 38.

It is uncommon to change the print format on the die cover, and I am not aware this had happened to other pre-2000 intel processors. Does anyone know a story behind that?

[Neology]

More examples of SY032 and QSpec samples

[H3nrik V!]

Looked through my images of my PPro's (too hard to unpack right now )

It seems that the 1MiB versions had an extra line on the back with the datecode. For the 2 I own, the datecode on the back matches the front. I don't know if it's always that way, or they are assembly dates or production dates. Well, here goes:

SY010 96W15 2 lines
SY047 96W42 1 line (hard to read date on the photo)
SY031 96W42 2 lines
SL22V 97W31 1 line (2 processors)
SL23M 97W13 1 line
SL22Z 98W11 seems to be 1 line, but Compaq sticker covers it ..
SL25A 98W06 2 lines
SL259 97W44 2 lines

[Neology]

[Neology]

The datacode on back has "E", "1" and "A" initial.
Anyone know what does the initials mean?

[crusty_dog]

[crusty_dog]

just noticed the post is a little old, but reactivated by amelbeach's spammy like comment or to build up comment numbers to post links.
Sorry if it isn't intended as either

[Neology]