Intel finds Sandy Bridge chipset fault, anticipates $1 billion recall setback

Ryan Wilsey 2 Feb, 2011 at 2:27pm ET Article published in Tech

Intel is in for a rough ride over the coming months. The silicon giant has recently announced that it has found a flaw in the chipsets for their new “Sandy Bridge” processors and has begun recalling them, a process that is expected to cost them a cool one billion dollars and delaying system manufactures by up to three months.

The culprit of the flaw is with the Sandy Bridge chipset, “Cougar Point”. In particular, the SATA controllers were susceptible to degrading over time, which could lead to poor performance with SATA devices such as hard drives and optical media devices. If the issue would have gone undetected, it is estimated that about 5% of all systems with this chip would have experienced these failures over a three-year period. Fortunately, this does not affect the Sandy Bridge CPUs themselves—owners of Sandy Bridge setups are advised to continue to use their systems with confidence. In the meantime, look for recall options to have the Cougar Point chipset replaced on the motherboard.

While the Sandy Bridge processors were launched just a few weeks ago, already eight million of the affected chipsets were shipped, many of which were installed on over 500 different computer models. Intel estimates that the costs of repairing and replacing the flawed chips will amount to about $700 million; they have also dropped their revenue target for the coming quarter by $300 million. In the meantime, Intel has halted production of the Cougar Point chipsets. Online retailers are also pulling Sandy Bridge chips, such as Newegg who has gone as far as disabling LGA 1155 as a CPU socket option.

Of course, this means good news for Intel’s rival, AMD. While Intel’s stock sagged, AMD climbed in early New York trading. In the meantime, AMD has its own variation of a CPU/GPU hybrid, dubbed Fusion. While Intel will ultimately not be set back much, it is indeed an embarrassment that AMD fans will be talking about for months.

Comments

2 Feb 2011 ~ 5:52pm BuddyJ They done goof'd. Hope they backtrace it.
2 Feb 2011 ~ 5:56pm Thrax Do the backtraces degrade, too?
2 Feb 2011 ~ 6:05pm Snarkasm It's a single transistor that leaks more current than it should, and it's a holdover from a previous design that actually isn't critical to any of the new hardware. It also doesn't affect the SATA-600 ports - so if that's all you use, there's nothing to worry about.

Sad, but not a huge issue except for the hit to their bottom line. Nice to see them catching it and issuing a recall from the get-go.
2 Feb 2011 ~ 6:29pm primesuspect As opposed to NVIDIA's approach:

"PROBLEM?"
2 Feb 2011 ~ 6:53pm RootWyrm

primesuspect wrote:

As opposed to NVIDIA's approach:

"PROBLEM?"

Followed by:

"IT IS SO TOTALLY YOUR FAULT."
2 Feb 2011 ~ 7:43pm Tushon It's a feature. Must buy new hardware.
2 Feb 2011 ~ 10:53pm Cliff_Forster How do you know when a company is just too damn big? When it can loose a billion dollars and people trivialize it as "no big thing".
3 Feb 2011 ~ 3:26pm Snarkasm Oh look, it's Cliff being denigrating in an Intel thread. And for being too good at their jobs....?
3 Feb 2011 ~ 4:17pm Tushon I nearly said this earlier.
3 Feb 2011 ~ 4:59pm Cliff_Forster

Snarkasm wrote:

Oh look, it's Cliff being denigrating in an Intel thread. And for being too good at their jobs....?

It is not denigrating. Look you said, it, like no big deal, they just lost a billion dollars. Drop in the bucket for them, and, its actually true, its what, about 2% of their revenue target?

Huge company is huge.

Buying an Intel processor is kind of like shopping at Wal Mart, or drinking Bud.
3 Feb 2011 ~ 5:04pm Snarkasm Except that Intel is top of its game, not cut-rate in any manner, and is actually superior to its competitors. Nice troll, though.
3 Feb 2011 ~ 5:37pm Thrax
3 Feb 2011 ~ 5:40pm UPSLynx TROLOLOLOL
3 Feb 2011 ~ 5:47pm shwaip

Cliff_Forster wrote:

It is not denigrating. Look you said, it, like no big deal, they just lost a billion dollars. Drop in the bucket for them, and, its actually true, its what, about 2% of their revenue target?

Huge company is huge.

Buying an Intel processor is kind of like shopping at Wal Mart, or drinking Bud.

Buying an AMD processor would be more like drinking Bud. Something that's cheap and close to good, rather than paying a bit more for the best.
3 Feb 2011 ~ 6:31pm Tim And the Intel / AMD drama continues.....
3 Feb 2011 ~ 6:33pm ardichoke

shwaip wrote:

Buying an AMD processor would be more like drinking Bud. Something that's cheap and close to good, rather than paying a bit more for the best.

If you really want to make this analogy accurately, it's more like buying the same beer except that with Intel you can get a 32oz. bottle and pay more per ounce whereas AMD only sells 20oz. bottles at a lower cost per ounce.

You know... since both company makes x86 processors.... which run the same programs, the same way.
3 Feb 2011 ~ 6:43pm shwaip And intel is probably more ABV.

And comes with a shot of shitty liquor.
3 Feb 2011 ~ 7:04pm fatcat if it ever gets to a point where there is only two beers, fucking shoot me
3 Feb 2011 ~ 11:00pm Cliff_Forster You know, I'm not trollin, honestly.

Without belittling me for a second lets try this.

Who agrees that it is at least mildly disturbing that a company is so huge that it can have a billion dollar screw up and pretty much shrug it off? I'm not making a quality comparison to Wal Mart, or Anheuser Busch, they just come to mind as company's that you might be able to define as "scary big".

Also, I said nothing about AMD relative to this issue. The issue is about Intel's dominance in the chip market, and how it may effect a good free open consumer market. Any company that can afford a billion dollar failure without some serious repercussions, well, it just bothers me.

Too much power, too much control, too much influence in the market. It just is not healthy. Its a gross imbalance that I wish consumers would be smart enough to level.

Once again, a company just lost A BILLION dollars, you know, the number with nine zeros after the one. I mean, stop and really think about that for a second. That company has about 100,000 employee's so thats about 10K a head? Still, they generate about 43 billion in revenue, so it is basically, like so what, its just a billion?

Take me at face value here for a second, I'm not trollin. Am I the only one that this bothers? No company, not AMD, not anyone should be able to weather a billion dollar screw up and not have a major shift. Look at Toyota recently, massive company, but a market with more players, much choice, its lead to a sort of shift in consumer attitude. In the chip market Intel could probably have a thousand homes burn to a ground because of some flaw in their chip set, and absolutely nothing would change. That just bothers me.
3 Feb 2011 ~ 11:29pm Bandrik I can certainly empathize with your argument that it's a little scary when a company can shrug it off when it suffers a $1 billion setback. Yes, Intel is a giant monolith of a company, but then again there's a lot of companies like that (for example, media companies "scare" me more with how they can influence entire nations of people with what amounts to manufactured propaganda). While I admit that I am not as knowledgeable about mega-corporations, I can only assume that this is why there are government-run regulations on corporations to begin with (anti-trust acts, etc).

There are some benefits to a big corporation, though. This does mean that Intel has the assets to invest in continued research and improvement for the future of their products -- which generally should have a positive impact on the world, even if they dwarf their second-biggest competitor. Of course, whether they invest in research properly (or even responsibly) is another matter I won't go into (and honestly, I don't know if Intel develops wisely or not).

Now, I'm more of an AMD guy because I prefer a chip that gives me more value for my dollar... but I have no problem if Intel were to lead the way with technological advances, as they can still make way for advancements elsewhere.
6 Feb 2011 ~ 7:44pm PirateNinja Exactly what chipset(s) is this a problem on? I'm reading conflicting reports.
6 Feb 2011 ~ 7:51pm PirateNinja Nevermind, I found the answer here (sorry, I didn't understand the term "cougar point")

A 6% drop in performance over 3 years on sata 2? Why is this a big deal?
7 Feb 2011 ~ 12:59am Thrax Because that 6% will, eventually, lead to complete failure.
7 Feb 2011 ~ 4:40am Snarkasm Of those particular SATA ports - not anything else on the board, lest you get the wrong idea.
7 Feb 2011 ~ 4:25pm Cliff_Forster Because the average computer does not mind if his hard drive won't work?
7 Feb 2011 ~ 5:11pm Snarkasm In the kindest way possible, Cliff: don't be daft.

SNB has two SATA controller chips on board - one for the SATA 300 ports, and one for the SATA 600 ports. This old transistor is in the SATA 300 controller. If/when it fails, it will only take out the SATA 300 ports - so if you're using a laptop that only uses two SATA 600 ports, or your desktop drives are only plugged into the SATA 600s, you'll never even notice an issue.
7 Feb 2011 ~ 5:16pm Cliff_Forster

Snarkasm wrote:

In the kindest way possible, Cliff: don't be daft.

SNB has two SATA controller chips on board - one for the SATA 300 ports, and one for the SATA 600 ports. This old transistor is in the SATA 300 controller. If/when it fails, it will only take out the SATA 300 ports - so if you're using a laptop that only uses two SATA 600 ports, or your desktop drives are only plugged into the SATA 600s, you'll never even notice an issue.

Unless the hard drive is plugged into the SATA 300 ports?

SATA 300, still pretty common last time I checked.
7 Feb 2011 ~ 5:21pm Snarkasm The SATA spec is entirely backwards compatible. You can plug your SATA 300 drives into the SATA 600 ports and be fine. Stop being Trolly McWhinerton. I'm not indicating it's not a flaw: it is, and they're recalling and replacing the boards. I'm saying if you don't need to use those ports, you don't have to return your board or be concerned about buying one - you won't see any other issues because of this flaw.
7 Feb 2011 ~ 5:34pm Cliff_Forster Trolly McWhinerton, LOL, okay, okay....

I made a serious comment about the economic imbalance in the chip market and it got quiet except for Bandrik.

Trollin is all I got for ya.
8 Feb 2011 ~ 5:38pm GnomeWizardd I suppose a 1 Billion dollar Hit has to hurt But seeing it as a drop in the bucket is actually kinda true. Intel has been around longer than most in the Chip world and has been a leader for most of it. The finances they have stock piled are prolly in the top 10 when it comes to tech companys