Duke, looks like it will take three months to fix that problem you were alluding to.
This looks real scary:
The problem doesn't appear to be specific to any one supplier, Micron officials
said Tuesday evening. Rather, the delays stem from a motherboard glitch that
forced Micron to redesign the motherboard, with help from AMD and Gigabyte
Technology Co. Ltd., the supplier of the board itself.
So, no matter how the mobo is implemented (so far), according to Micron, there are glitch or noise problems. Wonder how Compaq got around it? Superior engineering team no doubt, but never heard of any problems from them on this.
But Micron blames themselves (mostly)
"It's largely our fault," said a spokesman for Micron, Nampa, Idaho.
But good old AMD blames their customer, in the previous Gateway case:
At the time of the Gateway glitch, AMD officials claimed the errors were the
fault of either Gateway or its motherboard supplier.
Couldn't find a URL.
YIKES!
Micron Glitch Delays Athlon PCs
RELATED SYMBOLS: (AMD)(GTW)(MUEI)(JBL)
Nov 29, 2000 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- If you want to purchase Micron's
latest Athlon-based PC, be prepared to wait more than three months.
Micron Electronics Inc. (stock: MUEI) is reporting lead times of 98 days on a
version of the Millennia XP that uses the latest AMD-760 chipset from Advanced
Micro Devices Inc. (stock: AMD) and its new 266-MHz front-side bus speed,
together with a 1.2-GHz Athlon microprocessor.
The problem doesn't appear to be specific to any one supplier, Micron officials
said Tuesday evening. Rather, the delays stem from a motherboard glitch that
forced Micron to redesign the motherboard, with help from AMD and Gigabyte
Technology Co. Ltd., the supplier of the board itself.
When Micron launched the desktop configuration in late October, the company was
already quoting lengthy lead times because of customer demand, which last week
reached 56 days. Those lead times nearly doubled on Monday, when Micron finally
nailed down the problem. As of Tuesday, customers ordering the delayed Millennia
XP would receive the PC on Feb. 12.
By comparison, the lead time for a Millennia XP that uses a 200-MHz version of
the same chipset is only five to six days, Micron officials said.
"It's largely our fault," said a spokesman for Micron, Nampa, Idaho.
When Micron first started evaluating the systems, the first AMD-760 boards used
in the Millennia XP were essentially samples cobbled together by hand, the
spokesman said. But when Micron started ramping volume shipments, the company
found that the boards were unable to meet the noise tolerances required by the
faster 266-MHz front-side bus speed used by the AMD-760 chipset. Additional
hardware filters were required, and a new six-layer motherboard with improved
tolerances was approved Tuesday.
Gateway Inc. (stock: GTW) also reported problems in late June concerning its own
motherboards designed for the Athlon platform. However, the boards were designed
by Jabil Circuit Inc. (stock: JBL), a contract manufacturer, and appear to have
involved a power problem that may or may not be related to the Micron glitch.
Gateway's glitches caused the company to stop shipping the new Thunderbird
Athlons with integrated cache, the same chips used in the new Millennia XP While
those glitches caused errors, including the potential for a user to lose data,
Micron has not reported any similar problems.
At the time of the Gateway glitch, AMD officials claimed the errors were the
fault of either Gateway or its motherboard supplier.
The Micron spokesman said the company hopes the new Millennia XPs and their
redesigned motherboards will allow the company to meet demand earlier than
expected. As an example, he said Micron shipped a server using the Intel 840
chipset. Although lead times were initially projected at six weeks, the company
shipped the server in five weeks.
The company said it hopes to be able to quickly reduce the lead times to six
weeks, or about Jan. 20. However, the 98-day lead time is still the best guess,
and company policy requires Micron to be conservative in its estimates, the
spokesman said.
"With any new industry-leading technology you're going to run into things like
this," he said.
However, the spokesman added, even with the extremely lengthy lead times,
customer demand has been "quite good." |
