Sandy Bridge Chipset Shipments Halted Due To Bug

J. Dzhugashvili writes "Early adopters of Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors, beware. Intel has discovered a flaw in the 6-series chipsets that accompany the new processors. The flaw causes Serial ATA performance to 'degrade over time' in 'some cases.' Although Intel claims 'relatively few' customers are affected, it has stopped shipments of these chipsets and started making a revised version of the silicon, which won't be ready until late February. Intel expects to lose $300 million in revenue because of the problem, and it's bracing for repair and replacement costs of $700 million."

Comments

Re:Does anybody else think this sounds ominous?

[pclminion]

It sounds less like a deterministic error problem and more like a certain physical components are actually degrading much faster than expected problem...

Well, obviously. Could be a wire that was made too thin, or some component that overheats and slowly damages itself. I'm not sure why you think it's "ominous" though. It's a physical object that apparently has a design defect that causes it to wear out. I've seen ominous things before, but that usually involves a shadowy figure standing in a doorway with something that looks oddly like a machete, but dammit I can't really see clearly in this low light...