i820 Motherboards Recalled, Production Halted (INTEL)
Posted By Brian Neal
Wednesday, May 10, 2000 - 10:44:07 AM
Thanks to KH for passing along this story about Intel's announcement today that they will replace motherboards equipped with faulty i820 Memory Translator Hubs (MTH), which allow the use of PC100 SDRAM with the i820 Rambus chipset. In some cases, the MTH is apparently generating noise which results in intermittent crashes and/or reboots.
The MTH, which is used to allow the Direct Rambus DRAM-
enabled Intel 820 to accept SDRAM, has been found to cause
system noise issues that can cause some systems to
"intermittently reset, reboot, and/or hang," Intel said
in a statement issued today. In extreme conditions, the
noise could potentially cause data corruption. Intel said
that in some instances the company has been able to induce
data corruption under synthetic stress testing in its
laboratories.
The company has halted production of the MTH and has asked motherboard manufacturers to cease shipments of i820 motherboards equipped with the MTH. Considering the vast majority of i820 motherboards shipped thus far are equipped with SDRAM via the MTH due to the prohibitive costs of DRDRAM, this recall could be very costly for Intel. It is unknown at this time whether or not i840 (high-end Rambus) motherboards are also subject to the same instabilities, however, some users have reported similar problems. Intel is working to test a new version of the chip.
This is certainly not the first time we've heard of problems with the i820. On top of this, Intel began shipping old Slot-1 Pentium IIIs (Katmai) in order to supplement poor Coppermine yields. All told, it has not been a good couple of months for Intel.
Click here for more information about the problem at Intel's Support site.
EBN also has a story on the recall
This should cause another shortage of MB for PC's hopefully AMD can take advantage of this latest INTC blunder.
Milo |
