Dell resumes shipments
Thursday December 2 3:20 PM ET
Intel Shares Shrug Off Latest Chip Bug
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shares of Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC -
news) rose slightly on Thursday, shrugging off the company's disclosure of a bug in a small percentage of its new Pentium III processors that interferes in the PC boot-up process.
On Wednesday, the world's largest chip maker said it had found a bug, or ''erratum,'' in 1 to 2 percent of its new Pentium III family, introduced on Oct. 25 and still referred to by many in the industry by their code name, Coppermine.
The flaw slows down the booting-up process. When a PC is turned on, it may not boot up immediately but then boots up on the second attempt, Intel said. A company spokesman said that so far this had occurred only in a laboratory setting.
Dell Computer Corp. (NasdaqNM:DELL - news) temporarily halted shipments of some of its systems that have the new Pentium III chips, while it performed tests. Analysts said that on Thursday Dell resumed taking orders and was once again shipping its Optiplex GX 110 PCs after a brief hiatus.
Dell spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.
U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Ashok Kumar called the disclosure of the bug and the ensuing news reports ''much ado about nothing.'' He reiterated a ''strong buy'' rating on Intel.
''Unlike the Pentium floating point incident, there is no data corruption, there is no data loss,'' Kumar said. He was referring to a bug Intel found in the Pentium chip in 1994 that led to the company taking a charge in 1995 of $475 million to cover costs of replacing the chip.
Even in PCs where the Pentium III problem occurred, it did not occur
repeatedly, the analyst said. Kumar said the bug was ''insignificant to the end user.''
Intel shares were up 1 at 77-5/16 in active afternoon trade on the Nasdaq stock market. |
