Laptops With Certain NVidia Chips Failing

Eukariote writes "An estimated 18 million laptops with NVidia G84 and G86 graphics chips sold in the past one and a half years are experiencing high failure rates. Various laptop models from multiple manufacturers (Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others) are affected. NVidia blames it on bad chip packaging causing thermal failure. BIOS updates that turn the laptop fan on more frequently or permanently have been released by Dell and HP. The cynical interpretation is that this is likely to only delay the problem until the warranty has expired."

Comments

Nvidia appears to be screwed...

[Ethanol-fueled]

Here are exerpts from the most amusing description of the problem:

All Nvidia G84 and G86s are bad

The short story is that all the G84 and G86 parts are bad. Period. No exceptions. All of them, mobile and desktop, use the exact same ASIC, so expect them to go south in inordinate numbers as well. There are caveats however, and we will detail those in a bit.

Both of these ASICs have a rather terminal problem with unnamed substrate or bumping material, and it is heat related. If you ask Nvidia officially, you will get no reason why this happened, and no list of parts affected, we tried. Unofficially, they will blame everyone under the sun, and trash their suppliers in very colourful language.

When the process engineers pinged by the INQ picked themselves off the floor from laughing, they politely said that there is about zero chance that NV would change the assembly process or material set for a batch, much less an EOL part.

For dessert, there's this article to finish :)

NVIDIA's Official Statement

[Anonymous Coward]

From NVIDIA's Q2 FY2009 Business Update:

Separately, NVIDIA plans to take a one-time charge from $150 million to $200 million against cost of revenue for the second quarter to cover anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses, arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems. Certain notebook configurations with GPUs and MCPs manufactured with a certain die/packaging material set are failing in the field at higher than normal rates. To date, abnormal failure rates with systems other than certain notebook systems have not been seen. NVIDIA has initiated discussions with its supply chain regarding this material set issue and the Company will also seek to access insurance coverage for this matter.

Regarding the notebook field failures, NVIDIA president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated: "Although the failure appears related to the combination of the interaction between the chip material set and system design, we have a responsibility to our customers and will take our part in resolving this problem. The GPU has become an increasingly important part of the computing experience and we are seeing more interest by PC OEMs to adopt GPUs in more platforms. Recognizing that the GPU is one of the most complex processors in the system, it is critical that we now work more closely with notebook system designers and our chip foundries to ensure that the GPU and the system are designed collaboratively for the best performance and robustness."

Today's high performance notebooks are highly complex systems with extreme thermal environments. The combination of limited thermal management and frequent power cycling is particularly challenging for complex processors like the GPU.

Huang added, "This has been a challenging experience for us. However, the lessons we've learned will help us build far more robust products in the future, and become a more valuable system design partner to our customers. As for the present, we have switched production to a more robust die/package material set and are working proactively with our OEM partners to develop system management software that will provide better thermal management to the GPU."

Re:Model numbers

[Hemogoblin]

Here are the Dell models which have BIOS updates, from TFA:

Inspiron 1420
Latitude D630
Latitude D630c
Dell Precision M2300
Vostro Notebook 1310
Vostro Notebook 1400
Vostro Notebook 1510
Vostro Notebook 1710
XPS M1330
XPS M1530

Re:Oh, So That's What Happened...

[tlhIngan]

My MacBookPro turned on one morning, and everything worked but the display. I managed to log in, launch iTunes and play some music, but no graphics output. A trip to the Apple store later and I'm out a machine for a week. Never had an explanation, but now I am curious if i should send it back and ask for a new logic board with a graphics chip that isn't going to fail again prematurely due to faulty design.

Well, unless your replaced logic board fails again, I don't think Apple would take it back for replacement, since it basically works. Unfortunately, the affected GPUs are basically the entire nVidia 8x00 line (except for desktop 8300, and all the 8800's). Very few laptops actually use the 8800M GPU (think gaming laptops), so any other replacement, even a new laptop with an nVidia chipset will likely have the problematic GPU. The other alternative is to find a laptop with an AMD/ATi or Intel GPU.

Re:So, is it not fair

[IorDMUX]

Why is it all Nvidia's fault, seems to me it should be a shared responsibilty.

I work for a company big into mobile IC design (like NVIDIA). And I can say that it is very likely NVIDIA's fault because they (as do we), as the design company, specify every last detail of process, circuit, and package, when it comes to IC fabrication. Additionally, the company which produced these chips--TSMC--is the oldest, largest, and possibly most reliable dedicated fab company in existence. If there is a heat dissipation problem, it almost certainly stems from engineering oversight or management's corner-cutting on NVIDIA's part.