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Flaw Delays Shipment Of New 'Canterwood' Pentium 4

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-now-than-later dept.

bigal3du writes "Hardware-Unlimited has posted new information from Intel that they will be delaying the shipment of the new Pentium 4 3Ghz with an 800Mhz FSB. An Intel spokesman contacted Hardware-Unlimited early this morning to let the publication know that performance "anomolies" have been discovered, at the last minute, in validation testing and the processor will be temporarily delayed for shipment. Full details on Hardware-Unlimited.com Forums..." ninenet points to this PC Magazine article which explains the things that characterize the new chip and also mentions the delay.

6 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Regardless of the severity of the flaw... by drgroove · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... its great to see Intel take the initiative on their product and prevent a chip w/ even a minor flaw from entering the marketplace. While their stock price might take a minor hit today on the news that shipment has been delayed, imagine the fiasco down the line if thousands of flawed processors were in the wild, and Intel had to do a recall? FWIW, this was the "Right Thing To Do".

    If only other prominent tech companies (*cough* *microsoft* *cough*) would take this sort of lead and ensure that only products which were found to be free of flaws entered the market, instead of releasing half-baked products and using the customer base as guinea pigs... just imagine how better off we'd all be...

    1. Re:Regardless of the severity of the flaw... by GebsBeard · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Anyone with any memory at all remembers the infamous pentium bug of years back. These things happen and as they pack more transistors onto their chips we can expect the number of hardware bugs to climb as well. Many of them are never even caught because they're never seen. Intel got hit with a firestorm of bad publicity before and are just covering their a$$es. Its frankly good business.

    2. Re:Regardless of the severity of the flaw... by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "...it sounds like the real issue here is that you work for Microsoft, and know for a fact that my little slight on MS is completely valid, and I have in some way bruised your fragile, pathetically weak ego. Well, I'm sorry if your company can't get their product launches right the first time "

      "Only Hitler would be so intolerant of people with opposing views!"

      For the record, I work with AnonV, and no we're not at Microsoft. We're not even using Microsoft products much anymore. He's right, though, a lot of the 'flaws' involving Microsoft products are a result of creative thinking, not a result of flaws that could have been flushed out with testing. Argue with me if you want, but was the sysadmin here up until 4 months ago. If MS products were half as bad as people make-believe it is here, I wouldn't have had time for over 2,000 posts on Slashdot.

      His point is quite valid, your comment did not deserve it's moderation. It's really quite formulaic. You took Microsoft, a company everybody here hates, and said they should make perfect products. Well golly gee, what a precious gem of insight that was! Of course, if you had said that about the Open Source Community and the software they write, you'd be modded as troll because people'd see what you're really doing. Never mind that it's just as valid. We've all downloaded free apps that had some sort of flaw or defect. They're not exempt from your commment, but common sense dictatates that it'd be nice if they made perfect stuff to begin with.

      If you really were a software engineer, you'd understand this. You cannot anticipate every single thing people are going to try. The problem is a lot worse for Microsoft because a lot of their software hits the mass-market audience. Worse, their targets are people that aren't saavy enough to understand what's going on. Double worse is that MS has a bad rep so people intentionally try to find mischevious exploits. How come you don't know all this mr Software Developer?

      I have to admit, though, accusing him of working for Microsoft and then flaming him for it was quite the dramatic touch. I agree with him, I think you're lying about being a software developer. I've never met a Software Engineer with such a desire to engage in malice like this.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  2. too much power != good by 2057 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The more powerful the chips intel pushes the less effcient the coder becomes, i remember when i used to tweak my programs so they would run optimally on a slower machines, now a days its like you need 192mb and 500mhz for word processing. People need to get back to the old school days when a 486/66mhz and 4mb RAM was minumum. I can understand how games evolve and more power is needed, but it's not just games that have this high requirement these days.

    --
    For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
    1. Re:too much power != good by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The more powerful the chips intel pushes the less effcient the coder becomes, i remember when i used to tweak my programs so they would run optimally on a slower machines

      Yeah, I said that too when the PII came out. Sure there is always going to be bloat in code, especially in large projects. But you are more than welcome to go to ebay and get an 8088 or an Apple II and enjoy a machine that fits your computing needs (floppy drive or tape drive your pick).

      Me, I would like to have a computer fast enough to do things like audio/video editing, real time ogg encoding, or whatever. I surely would not mind buying a computer today thats 4x faster than these new P4s for about $1000. I'd find a need for it or enjoy the lack of bloat feeling, who cares?

      Although I have had 0 formal training in programming, one thing I've read and have incorporated into my coding is early optimization == bad. 1st write good code, then find out where the bottlenecks are (if any) and then optimize those bottlenecks. There are even great profiling tools out there to help you do these things.

  3. Definition of "good" development by m11533 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Long ago the developer/hardware equation was changed. Originally, hardware was far more expensive than the people developing the software. That was when investing lots of energy into hand-optimizing was the proper tradeoff.

    Years ago, before 1GHz was considered a short term possibility, hardware costs had decreased and software costs had increased, to the point where it is the DEVELOPER who is the most expensive piece of the equation. Thus, we now are at the point where, with the exception of a few very specialized segments, we do whatever it takes to optimize the developer time in building software. That is not to say that developers can be careless and wasteful. But that developers should not waste time optimizing code. IFF performance is an issue, THEN one takes measurements and optimizes critical areas consuming the majority of time. Beyond that, it just isn't worth it. Today's 3GHz machines with GB of RAM only reinforce that this is the only appropriate approach to software development.