>Understand, I do believe that they would like to produce only 20 MHz parts
>(or whatever the highest speed is) but based on many converations with many
>vendors, I don't think that they are actually able to pull this off.

This is probably the crux of the matter. The costs involved with testing all
parts at maximum speed would be horrible. It may even be that batch testing can
simplify testing at lower speeds, i.e. by batch testing at temperature limits at
20Mhz they may be able to show that room temperature testing at 4Mhz guarantees
full temperature operation at 4Mhz, i.e. 4Mhz parts do not actually get tested
at full temperature range. This makes testing parts at 4Mhz a lot cheaper, and
as many people do not need the higher speed the costs drop dramatically. If you
do need the higher speed then you pay the testing costs to guarantee the full
temp specs at that speed.

If this is not the case, why do Intel provide so many speed variations of the
Pentium when the steps in speed are such small percentages of the operating
frequency?

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