Intel Says Problem Chipset Worldwide About 8 Million China Not Yet Calculated

In response to the design issues of Intel's "CougarPoint" 6 series chipsets, which were listed in January of this year, yesterday (February 24th), Intel held a media conference on related issues and announced the handling of relevant issues.

Intel said that the number of problematic chip sets worldwide is about 8 million, and the expected loss to Intel is 1 billion U.S. dollars. It will resume full production capacity in April.

January 31, 2011 (US time), Intel announced the first time, the company found that the recent launch of some Intel SATA ports in the Intel 6 Series chipset supporting the second generation of Intel Core processors may affect the potential performance problem. According to the announcement, out of the 6 SATA ports of the 6 series chipset, the 2-5 ports (SATA 2.0) will increase with the use of time, and may have a roughly 5% chance of performance degradation or not within 3 years. Potential problems such as stability.

According to Intel Corporation, the number of problematic chip sets worldwide is around 8 million. It is estimated that the loss to Intel will be 1 billion U.S. dollars. The current chip set issue has already been resolved and the updated products will begin to be available on February 12. It will resume full capacity in April.

Zhao Jun, a senior architecture manager at Intel, told Daily Economic News that the problem with the chipset was limited to the Intel 6 Series chipset, not the second generation Intel Core processor, and the problem was limited to the 6 series chipset. Some of the SATA ports have experienced premature fading in their service life. "The problem with the 6-series chipset is that it is designed to be inadequate, and it is not the same as the design flaw of functional failure. The latter will directly lead to functional failures and errors rather than a certain probability of functional degradation after long-term use."

"Daily Economic News" reporter learned from Intel that the above problems exist in the global market in desktop systems using Intel H67 and P67 chipsets, and mobile systems using Intel HM67 and HM65, which may be affected by Intel brand motherboards including DP67BG, DP67DE, DP67BA, DH67GD, DH67CL, DH67CF, DH67BL, etc. However, only some of the above models are sold in the Chinese market. Or impact on global PC sales in the first quarter "Because the problematic 6-series chipsets have a 22-day cycle from the time of listing to the suspension of supply, and there are still about one week of Spring Festival holidays, the shipment volume in the Chinese market is very small." According to Zhang Yijun, Intel Brand and Market Strategy Department, only some of the new quad-core processor computers are currently available. These computers are high-end models and currently have a limited number of sales in the market.

As for the number of chips involved in the Chinese market and the corresponding impact, Intel said that there is no statistics yet.

It is understood that Intel is in the upper reaches of the PC industry chain, and the impact of chipset issues has spread throughout the industry. After Intel acknowledged the lack of design considerations for the 6-series chipset, many PC motherboard manufacturers have also issued corresponding solutions. Computer manufacturers including Lenovo, Asus, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard also stopped selling the products using the problem chipset, and at the same time promised compensation. Loss of consumer assistance to help Intel solve the problems caused by the 6 series chipsets.

Zhao Jun said that the current B2 version of the 6 series chipset has been fully resolved in the B3 version, and began shipping on February 12, all recovered chipset Intel will be destroyed. This time, Intel launched unconditional return and exchange activities for all OEMs and ODMs, which means that defective chips will allow Intel to take out a lot of real money to deal with the aftermath.

According to Intel’s official estimates, the cost of processing the problematic chip may reach 700 million U.S. dollars, which also caused Intel’s first-quarter financial loss to reach 300 million U.S. dollars. However, Dean, the chief researcher of Mercury, a chip market research firm, predicts that Intel will spend at least US$1 billion more for its aftermath.

People in the industry are generally concerned that due to Intel’s share of around 80% of the global CPU market, defective chip issues may, to some extent, impact on global PC sales in the first quarter.