The latest news on the chipset front has it that Intel 6-series chipsets come with a flaw that could cause your HDDs and DVDs to malfunction. Many motherboard makers as well as OEMs/ODMs have already pulled some products and this move is expected to cost Intel a pretty penny indeed.
Intel said “In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives.” The rapid succession of “in some cases”, “may degrade” and “potentially impacting” is there to make you feel like it’s never going to happen.
Samsung today announced that the company intends to refund or exchange each of their products launched so far. Namely, the company launched six Cougar Point based PC lines in Korea and one in the US. The company said this act of good will be funded by Intel. Gigabyte also instructed distributors and resellers to halt motherboard sales and we hear that Newegg deactivated many listings as well.
Intel says that the issue has been corrected and that new versions of the chipset will ship late February, with full volume recovery expected in April. Unfortunately, it has been said that the entire thing will cost Intel as much as $1 billion in repairs, lost revenue and resulting delays.
Update:
Faulty transistor
Anandtech had a nice chat with Intel's VP and Director of Intel Client PC Operations and Enabling, Steve Smith about the yesterday Intel 6-series chipset SATA bug and it appeares that the bug is caused by a faulty transistor inside the 3Gbps PLL clocking tree.
The problem that plagues the 3Gbps ports however doesn't affect 6Gbps ports as these are connected to a different PLL clocking tree. It appears that the aforementioned transistor leaks current which ultimately leads to a failure of the ports. To make things worse (for Intel), the problem appeared on the B-stepping of the chipsets, which is the one that got shipped to customers.
Intel still keeps telling the world that this is not a full blown recall and calls it "a simple oversight". Quite a costly oversight if you ask us
