Intel’s quick response to a chip flaw illustrates how much is at stake in the rollout of a new CPU.
Codenamed “Cougar Point,” the flawed chip is part of the chipset supporting Intel’s second generation Core series of processors, codenamed “Sandy Bridge,” which were released in early January. Intel announced yesterday that it had discovered a design flaw in the chip and immediately halted shipments of the affected products.
“The chip passed all of our normal quality assurance and customer-QA programs,” said Chuck Mulloy, corporate communications director for Intel. But after Intel received returns from “a handful” of customers about 10 days ago, the company began retesting the chips with intensified stress, simulating the impact of use at high levels over a three-year period.
“The root cause was discovered after the additional stress testing,” Mulloy told Wired.com, “and once we discovered that, the fix was apparent.”
Affected products containing the Cougar Point chips have been shipping since Jan 9, and Intel has shipped an estimated 8 million chips needing replacement. Approximately 500,000 finished systems contain Cougar Point chips, Mulloy said.
Intel manufacturing plants are currently in the process of correcting the design flaw in affected Cougar Point chips, which requires a new mask spin on an outer layer of metal on each chip. Since the fix is applied to an outer layer of metal rather than one more interior to the chip, Mulloy says correcting the flaw is much less difficult.
Intel expects first fixed products to be out of the factory by the end of February, and to be back to full production volume by April.
Intel’s quick handling of the situation most likely comes from a willingness to avoid a repeat of an earlier chip-recall nightmare. The company suffered a massive PR hit in 1994 after the discovery of the Pentium FDIV Bug, which the company initially dismissed as a relatively rare problem found in extremely rare cases (calculations pointed to a 1 in 9 billion chance of error, according to Intel).
But the nonchalance of Intel’s response combined with multiple news outlets picking up the story created a public outcry, forcing the company to offer replacements for the flawed chips. It cost the company a reported $475 million in pretax earnings.
Even with a quick-fix response, Intel will pay a high price for the Cougar Point recall. The company estimates a $1 billion net loss for the first quarter of 2011 after calculating for lost revenues and expenses associated with repair and replacement.
The fallout is spreading to other hardware manufacturers, too. Samsung is currently offering refunds for all of its computers equipped with the Sandy Bridge chipset, according to Bloomberg. NEC may push back the release dates of four new planned PC models as well.
Hardware manufacturers Acer and Lenovo have both promoted hardware to come in 2011 that utilizes the Sandy Bridge chipset. But Acer’s plans for a new line of Sandy Bridge–powered tablets haven’t been affected, Acer spokesperson Kelly Odle told Wired.com. Lenovo’s most-recent generation of IdeaPad laptops and IdeaCentre desktop PCs — both of which contain the Sandy Bridge chipset — may be affected by Intel’s design flaw, Lenovo spokesperson Ray Gorman told Wired.com in a statement.
The problem originated as a design error in the chip’s serial-ATA (or SATA) port.
“On day one or two of using a device with the chip, you won’t see a problem,” Intel’s Mulloy said. “But two or three years out, we’re seeing degradation in the circuit on ports 2 through 5. We’re seeing a failure rate in approximately 5 to 20 percent of chips over a two- or three-year period, which is unacceptable for us.”
Photo: Intel’s Sandy Bridge Chipset/Courtesy Intel
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