Grantsdale to be recalled

[glugglug]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1617083,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

 

[Ages120]

That sucks. Atleast they figured it out.

 

[zephyrprime]

Normally, when a chip is being fabricated, an insulating layer of film is deposited to electrically isolate the chip. That film is normally removed from the die pad area, where the chip interfaces with the pins that connect it to the outside world.

In this case, the thin film on a pad area was only partially removed, causing the real-time clock circuitry to be susceptible to excessive leakage

Wow. I'm surprised they made such a simple manufacturing mistake.

 

[MDE]

At least they caught it before millions of chipsets shipped and end users found the problems the hard way.

 

[RaiderJ]

Aren't these the same boards with the pins IN the socket, instead of on the CPU? Seems to me like this might be a series of boards to shy away from.

 

[LTC8K6]

Opteron , where quality is no longer to be found.

Nobody is perfect, btw.

 

[Sonic587]

Good thing they caught in in time.

Also, I think it would be a good idea to edit the last part out of the title before this turns into a flame fest.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

this stuff happens. I am sure Intel will be fine. I am sure AMD will be fine. There are fixes and no one appears to be to affected so let stand hand in hand and pray to the Computer God Hardwaricus that Her high priests AMD and INTEL peacefully co-exist, innovate decry their greed and gives us lowly mortals great game and pron chips. MMMMMMMM chips

 

[MrCodeDude]

Originally posted by: MDE
At least they caught it before millions of chipsets shipped and end users found the problems the hard way.

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

Normally, when a chip is being fabricated, an insulating layer of film is deposited to electrically isolate the chip. That film is normally removed from the die pad area, where the chip interfaces with the pins that connect it to the outside world.

In this case, the thin film on a pad area was only partially removed, causing the real-time clock circuitry to be susceptible to excessive leakage

Wow. I'm surprised they made such a simple manufacturing mistake.

The article's explanation is very simple... The actual issue wasn't.

 

[txxxx]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Opteron , where quality is no longer to be found.

Nobody is perfect, btw.

Indeed. Although a micro-code update can solve the opteron's issue. At least they recalled it, some manufacturers would try to just brush it off.

*cough*IBM 75GXP*cough*

 

[SuperTool]

Originally posted by: Wingznut

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

Normally, when a chip is being fabricated, an insulating layer of film is deposited to electrically isolate the chip. That film is normally removed from the die pad area, where the chip interfaces with the pins that connect it to the outside world.

In this case, the thin film on a pad area was only partially removed, causing the real-time clock circuitry to be susceptible to excessive leakage

Wow. I'm surprised they made such a simple manufacturing mistake.

The article's explanation is very simple... The actual issue wasn't.

So the pad wasn't making good contact with the package, and that caused exessive leakage? I am guessing they weren't getting a full rail signal at the pad.

 

[Schadenfroh]

But But, intel puts so much more time and money into testing and quality assurance than AMD

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: txxxx

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Opteron , where quality is no longer to be found.

Nobody is perfect, btw.

Indeed. Although a micro-code update can solve the opteron's issue. At least they recalled it, some manufacturers would try to just brush it off.

*cough*IBM 75GXP*cough*

That's half the point I was going to make. The other half is that the ICH6x issue can cause data corruption on drives attached to it. I can stomach a crash and reboot, but if I lost the data on my RAID array before I got to back it up I'd be damaged greatly.

 

[us3rnotfound]

weird, on that site, there is an ad for HP

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

Normally, when a chip is being fabricated, an insulating layer of film is deposited to electrically isolate the chip. That film is normally removed from the die pad area, where the chip interfaces with the pins that connect it to the outside world.

In this case, the thin film on a pad area was only partially removed, causing the real-time clock circuitry to be susceptible to excessive leakage

Wow. I'm surprised they made such a simple manufacturing mistake.

"Real-time clock circuitry"? Hmm.

Do you think that they have an onboard reference clock-generator now?

Maybe the rumors are true, that the 9xx chipsets will have some sort of "anti-overclocking" tech. in them. (Intel does have a patent on a method to block overclocking, based on a second independent clock reference source.)

I thought that all of the threads talking about not being able to overclock the 915 chipset, were based on a mistaken interpretation of the fact that the "performance enhancements" (PAT version 2) of the 925, would be more fully locked-out on the 915, avoiding what we've seen with the i865 with "PAT" matching up to the i875 chipset in terms of performance. (The silicon is actually the same, as I understand it. Just a speed-bin that Intel charges more to OEM mobo makers for the i875.)

While that may in fact be true, this new news does lead one to wonder if Intel is in fact going to implement strict anti-overclocking tech. This seems all the more ironic to me, having heard news a few months ago that Intel was looking into implementing a "system driver", kind of like NVidia, to allow overclocking of their chipsets and/or boards.

Wouldn't it be rather ironic, if Intel actually has implemented anti-overclocking tech, to prevent 3rd-party mobo makers from allowing OC'ing, but then on Intel's own "enthusiast" line of mobos, allow overclocking? Thus cornering the enthusiast/overclocker market all to themselves? Intel's no stranger to monopolizing markets, I think that we all know that.

Food for thought.

Edit: Here's a quote from the article:

Andrew Root, an analyst for Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research in New York, reported that only a small number of chip sets were affected, a number that was confirmed by an industry source. "As we understand it, the problem had (past tense because now appears fixed) to do with current leakage in the chipset's [real-time-clock] feature, and was encountered in certain printed circuit board designs," Root wrote in a note to clients Friday. "Intel's own?brand motherboards did not appear to have this issue.

Interesting to note that Intel's own boards didn't have this "issue", only 3rd-party OEMs.

 

[stevty2889]

Wouldn't have been millions of chips any way, 5000 at most, as it was only 1 lot that wasn't properly proccessed.