In a move that’s reminiscent of the famous Pentium floating point bug, Intel has issued a recall of all new Sandy Bridge PCs and laptops that run its latest generation of processor.
The recall is to fix a problem with the Series 6 chipset, used in all Sandy Bridge systems. The company says that the SATA ports within the chipset could degrade over time. This would impact the performance and functionality of any SATA-attached device such as hard disks and optical drives.
The recall, which Intel claims will cost the company around $1 billion is being organised with OEMs and it will affect computers that have literally only just been delivered, as the Sandy Bridge chips have only recently come on the market.
An Intel spokesperson told PC Promagazine that arojnd 5% of the SATA components were likely to fail with the failure rate rising to 15% for heavy users. They went on to say that while 8 million Sandy Bridge chips had been sold, only a small number had been delivered to consumers.
While the company has rectified the problem, the new motherboards won’t start arriving at OEMs until the end of February. Full volume production has also been halted until April. It’s not all bad news for Intel though as the Sandy Bridge processors are bound to be successful anyway and are streets ahead of the power currently offered by AMD chips.
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that arojnd 5% …
An Intel recall of the heralded Sandy Bridge chip set was introduced by the business on Monday. A style problem was discovered that was missed before the Sandy Bridge chip set began shipping. The error could possibly impact the efficiency of the processor over time. Intel’s recall of Sandy Bridge is anticipated to cost the business about $1 billion and create opportunities for Advanced Micro Devices, one of Intel’s chief rivals.