Intel’s billion-dollar mistake: Why chip flaws are so hard to fix

ouch, to say the least.

 

Huge loss economically speaking, but Intel can handle much more

 

LOL!

I was about to buy an ASUS Sandy Bridge, ASUS N53SV. Been a fan of ASUS for a while. Had to wait already 2 months for it release, and was about to pre-order from Amazon.

Now, have to wait till the summer to buy one and in the meantime the prices will stay high, for any new purchases of computers. And, most probably will stay high well past summer due to short supply.

Best regards,

KOR!

P.S. Ron, which part of Texas are you from?

 

This will be the equivalent of the AMD TLB cache error in my opinion.The hype will be so high that people will avoid buying even older Intel platforms.
Many people avoided in 2007 to buy AMD due to the CPU bug and AMD almost gone out of bussiness.
So users will need to wait for april - may to get a replacement motherboard.
At that time the AMD Buldozer ,said to own any CPU within minimum over 50% performance ,will simply knock Intel between the eyes ,not to kill it but to bring it close to ground.
I ve also hear the Intel stock is not in a good state
I use AMD for many years and I simply love their problem
They simply skiped testing stages to bring the new chips before AMD and they failed ,you got to love this

 

I have been watching this chip for awhile now. Some pretty good performance offerings, to be sure. I had already decided to wait until perhaps 3rd or 4th quarter to buy a new rig. I would really rather get rev 3 or better than rev 1, and that applies to motherboards and everything else. I have been bitten more than once by buying rev 1 "bleeding edge" stuff, and with the price I plan on dropping, I think I will give it some time to "mature".

Sul.

 

Oddly enough, the cause was simple enough for Intel's sandy bridge chipset flaw: the thin gate metal oxide layer on that one transistor. Now either the voltage can be reduced or the oxide layer made thicker, but reducing voltage may have other effects which could reduce stability, as well as affect the overclocking potential. This is probably why Intel chose to issue a recall.....

Anyway, it's a simple errata that hopefully won't repeat itself. As circuits get more and more complicated, some oversight could always happen

 

However, it is the consumers who will eventually pay the price, in higher prices due to short supply of chipsets.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

It looks like Intel has made an excellent decision, which should benefit everyone including the environment.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

I agree. This is an excellent business solution - though I would hardly call it genius as companies have been doing this and similar tactics for years. It is not meant to deceive (like a "cover up"), but to keep from taking such a huge loss that they have to raise prices to stay in business. It is common for the same motherboard to be installed in several models, but this feature is disabled here and that feature is enabled there, depending on which model was purchased. This problem is isolated to one noncritical feature that many users will never miss. I see no problem with this at all.

When 5.25" DS/DD (double sided/double density) floppy disks first started to appear we learned that all floppies were made as DS/DD from the start. But before leaving the factory, each was tested and if only one side passed, the disk was labeled and packaged as SS/DD (single sided/double density) and sold at a cheaper price. A much better solution for everyone than tossing them in the trash. The testing must have been pretty stringent because it was common to punch a key notch on the flip side to make it writable too, and there were usually no problems - except for only 170Kb of storage per side! But I'm wandering...

I note Intel's stocks took a dive over the weekend too, but seems to be climbing back already so that is good news. Once the clamor dies down and the shareholders and market analysts descend from panic mode, there will be the calm understanding that this is just a scraped knee and a couple bruises - stings like heck, but no real or lasting damage.

I am just glad this happened to Intel and not AMD. Intel has the deep pockets to absorb this hit with just a stumble; not sure AMD could get up again, let alone stay in the race. AMD leapfrogged over and embarrassed them once. It took Intel over 10 years to catch up and take the lead again. Humiliated for being spanked by this little startup company has Intel vowing to never be caught sitting on its laurels again. I prefer Intel and use Intel, but AMD must stay strong to keep nipping at Intel's heels. And we need Intel to keep looking over its shoulder while pushing new technologies forward. If this happened to AMD and they were no longer competitive, I am not sure Intel would be motivated to continue investing as much into R&D. That would hurt us all.

Yeah, I agree. The company and all the smaller companies that depend on Intel's success to survive, consumers by having a less expensive alternative for an option, and as you note, the landfills too.

 

I have this defect in my new Dell XPS 17R Laptop with the i7 core Processor that I ordered Jan18th and received Feb 8th I have been keeping an eye on this thread in the mean time I called Dell support to make sure my system is on the list with this problem and they said yes and they told me to call back in April and they will send someone out to change out the Motherboard and Processor as it is a matched set! But all is fine for the moment and they also said If I have any problems before April that they will change out the Motherboard and do it again in April! Oh well only if I knew before I ordered

TH

 

So I'm not affected by this at all it's the Intel® 6 Series Express Chipset in which mine is Intel® 5 Series Express Chipset! Dell support needs some serious help

http://www.intel.com/consumer/products/processors/chipset.htm

TH

 

Great news that you're not affected, and that you can keep your notebook

 

I wasn't looking forward to sending in to a Dell depot for them to change out!

TH