What is process of "speed bin"?

[OnDborder]

What is process of "speed bin" memory?
I've seen it but I cannot find what the process is.

[fldrice]

Speed binning is when memory manufactures test memory modules for specific speeds and timming capabilities and bins them accordingly.

[felinusz]

"Speed binning" is the process of testing identical hardware parts to various specific standards - the parts that meet the highest standard and are sold as faster products, the parts that meet the lower standard are sold as slower products.

That standard is variable, depending on the part in question.


Standards are usually specific - not only does the part need to meet a certain speed specification (with memory, you're looking at both a MHz speed, and specific timings), but it has to meet that specification with some degree of stability at a certain temperature, in a certain environment. So, the part has to run X speed specification with stability at X temperature, for X period of time, on X platform in order to meet the standard.

With GPUs for example, the standard often includes abusively high ambient temperatures. Among the general computer-user market, the GPU is often run in a low-airflow, hot, dusty environment. GPU standards need to accomodate this, to prevent loads of returns when cards overheat in that environment, and stop working properly.


Those are the basics of testing (just simple standards), but 'true' speed binning is also deeply multi-layered, and heavily dependant on the company's binning policies.

Some memory parts binned for, say, a PC3200 destination, are not 'screened' to see if they will run at, say, PC4800 standards. As such, un-aggresively binned memory can sometimes overclock quite well even if it is sold as a PC3200 stock part. But, the sticks have only been screened to PC3200, making finding good overclocking sticks largely luck-of-the-draw.

Sometimes, all the parts are 'screened' for higher standards first, in this case the lower-end product tends to uniformly perform poorly. This is not particularly common as far as I know.

Companies do not typically share their binning standards or procedures, so we can only speculate as to how aggressively and tightly/loosely some parts are binned.

All of our overclocking hardware (GPUs, GDDR, CPUs, even motherboard chipsets) are tested to meet standards - and a lot of our hardware is 'speed binned' (a whole lot more than you would think...). Speed binning and standard testing are slightly different, because speed binning selectively takes the same hardware, and places it into a faster stock product. Standard testing simply ferrets out the poorer quality hardware.


Speed binning and yields are the two factors that a lot of us ignore, that pretty much control the scope of the entire overclocking 'sport'.

[Sucka]

Very well put.

Obviously there is some human interaction involved in this, how does that aspect work? Do they have like 100 dudes chillin in an office just poping RAM in and out? I will gladly test OCZ products from home if i can keep some :p

[Counda]

Obviously there is some human interaction involved in this, how does that aspect work? Do they have like 100 dudes chillin in an office just poping RAM in and out? I will gladly test OCZ products from home if i can keep some :p



Who wouldn't :p


What an amazing job that would be... :drool:

[felinusz]

Sucka

Obviously there is some human interaction involved in this, how does that aspect work? Do they have like 100 dudes chillin in an office just poping RAM in and out? I will gladly test OCZ products from home if i can keep some :p


I don't know about human interaction dude, I'm pretty sure that because of the scale of testing involved, speed binning is probably automated :-/.

Remember that our GPUs, GDDR ICs, CPUs, and DDR ICs that are speed binned, are speed binned before they are manufactured into an end product.

Something like a GPU (Lets use the example of the X850 Pro, X850 XT, and X850 XTPE, all three of which use the R480 core) needs to be tested for functional pipelines, and the ability to run given clockspeeds at a given temperature, with a given voltage, for a given amount of time.

The tightest speed binned R480 core meets the X850 XTPE standard, and makes it into the 16 pipe X850 XTPE. The next tightest speed bin meets the X850 XT standard, and makes it into the 16 pipe X850 XT. The cores that fail pipeline testing but that met the X850 Pro standard make it into the 12 pipe X850 Pro.

Since the testing occurs before the cards are actually manufactured, I would assume some sort of machine is involved (The idea of a GPU/CPU GDDR/DDR IC testing machine is pretty cool, you could set the bin to whatever standard you wanted, and make an uber stick of RAM, or an uber graphics card!) :)


I'm pretty sure that OCZ for example hand-tests each of their sticks before selling them though.

It's not a job I'd want - you'd be throwing out all kinds of (perhaps redeemable) hardware that didn't meet standard. Personally, that would drive me insane :).

[fldrice]

Yeah most speed binning is automated except for memory. Mushkin and OCZ production lines run through initial automated testing and will receive hand testing as well, at least that's the way it works with the PC-5000 and Redlines.

[Sucka]

That's pretty much how i pictured it. Just seems like a lot of work to hand test the samples and maintain competitive pricing. Maybe an OCZ rep can chime in with some info on their process...