What Intel Learned When an Elevator Smashed Into Its Supercomputer Chips:
Intel has plenty of challenges in manufacturing processors. But it discovered a new one -- dangerous elevator doors -- during the development of Ponte Vecchio, the processor brains being used to construct the Aurora supercomputer.
Intel personnel were moving a bunch of the processors on a cart when a closing elevator door toppled it, Raja Koduri, leader of Intel's Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, said at Intel's Innovation conference Tuesday.
He didn't say how many were ruined, but the loss stung because they were initial samples used to test performance and look for problems. "Every one of them at that stage is expensive," Koduri said in an interview. With hundreds of manufacturing steps, it takes months to make a single advanced chip.
The elevator door wasn't just a one-off bummer. It actually revealed a problem that stood in the way of Intel's effort to reclaim its processor manufacturing leadership: human error.
Ponte Vecchio is a mammoth processor with more than 100 billion transistors, just about as many as anybody's processor in the business. To make something that big, Intel used its advanced packaging methods to bring together 47 separate slices of silicon.
But that packaging relied on humans, carts and elevators that are much more fallible than the processes Intel typically uses to build chips.
[...] In designing Ponte Vecchio, Intel expected troubles with packaging. But the company was surprised with how smoothly it worked.
"The thing that we were most worried about was advanced packaging," but the 47 chiplets went together smoothly, Koduri said in a press conference. The problems came from mundane problems like a bug in the PCI Express communications system.
That result helped convince Intel it could employ advanced packaging for a critical processor like Meteor Lake.
"It gave us a lot of confidence for higher volume products to do advanced packaging," Koduri said.
(Score: 3, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Friday September 30 2022, @11:23AM (12 children)
... or it didn't happen. What kind of elevator door can smash a kart and packages thereupon? All doors I used so far seemed to have detectors for obstacles. Reeks of a Homer Simpson excuse for having blown up the power plant again.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Friday September 30 2022, @12:16PM
Well, then... D'oh-nuts or it didn't happen! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by EJ on Friday September 30 2022, @12:32PM (7 children)
It didn't say smashed. It said toppled over. I can imagine they were pulling the cart OFF the elevator, started turning the cart before it was fully off the elevator, and the door started to close just as the cart cleared the sensors. The elevator door could then have hit the cart just enough to cause it to topple over as the people were pulling it. I'm sure it wasn't 100% the doors, but also the pulling by the people that caused it to topple over.
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Friday September 30 2022, @01:10PM (4 children)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday September 30 2022, @02:21PM
Loss of some expensive silicon to a company that can afford it, isn't really news. Company that should have a better system in place that wouldn't screw up a cart full of expensive silicon is interesting, though. The interesting part being that they made a stupid mistake and this wasn't the first time. Reeks of mismanagement. The common tie-in for most people is that elevators are stupid. The elevator in our building has been in service since the building was built in the 90s. During that time, we've had numerous calls for elevator repair. No one's ever been stuck in it as far as I know. I still use the stairs.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by EJ on Friday September 30 2022, @02:51PM (1 child)
I don't know if you have kids or not, but you buy them an expensive toy and they end up playing with the box.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Saturday October 01 2022, @09:04AM
Uhh... I hate to tell you this but that's not a kid. The tail and whiskers should have given it away earlier I think.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NateMich on Friday September 30 2022, @07:35PM
Honestly, to me that's the most interesting part.
I would think that there would never be a situation like this possible. Surely Intel can afford a better method of transporting important things, no?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2022, @02:34PM (1 child)
The doors also won't start closing immediately just because the cart just cleared the sensors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2022, @05:45PM
I guess you could say they didn't have good enough intel on different elevator types.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday September 30 2022, @01:35PM (1 child)
Some kind of cargo elevator perhaps? Some of them don't even have doors or gates so if you are pulling a trolley in or ut I guess there could be a gap and it could snag and fall over etc. That said if a trolley tips over you probably loaded it wrong so it might not even be the elevators fault. This just screams of user-error. As noted there seems to be a certain Homer Simpsons factor in it -- why be like an idiot and take two trips when I can just load all these boxes onto the trolley and do it in one trip ... what could possibly go wrong ...
That said from the headline I was more expecting that the chips had been crushed under the elevator. So they had learn new insight into what happens when a heavy hydraulic system crushes a small ceramic object.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2022, @02:40PM
Even the mall I go to has better cargo elevators. You can even get the doors to not automatically close till things are ready to move. This makes service to other floors slower, but it's for moving cargo not mall goers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Friday September 30 2022, @02:28PM
The answer is Hospital grade Elevators. From "normal kinds of injury" to decapitations and people literally being cut in half.
https://www.waff.com/story/23835907/victim-identified-in-fatal-hospital-elevator-accident/ [waff.com]
https://news.yahoo.com/outcry-tunisian-doctor-dies-hospital-145238885.html [yahoo.com]
https://allnurses.com/patient-dies-horrible-elevator-accident-t29963/ [allnurses.com]
https://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/FreakAccidentElevator.htm [simpletoremember.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/world/mom-26-cut-in-half-when-elevator-reportedly-malfunctions-in-freak-accident [foxnews.com]
https://www.jaroslawiczandjaros.com/nyc-elevator-accidents-everything-you-need-to-know/ [jaroslawiczandjaros.com]
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/jps-elevator-brake-failure/287-c2b6ebd0-3e07-4bbc-9feb-fec051663d11 [wfaa.com]
https://www.fox4news.com/news/jps-hospital-gives-new-details-into-elevator-accident-that-injured-nurse [fox4news.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Username on Friday September 30 2022, @01:42PM
What kind of floor plan do they have that requires an elevator? All testing should be on the same level, not bumping bliss trays around .
(Score: 4, Funny) by Megahard on Friday September 30 2022, @03:27PM
Sounds more like self-aware elevator sabotages plan to replace its brain.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Friday September 30 2022, @04:03PM
So, the next generation of Intel chips is so poor even machines are gonna hate them...
Joke aside, I consider this incident deliberate, aimed at stock holders to keep them calm. For a while.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Friday September 30 2022, @06:02PM
they encounter some basic obstacle of life and lose their shit because lifting a keyboard is a workout for many of these people