Intel’s second generation Core processors were launched officially just last month, and went on with a very big bang that gave extremely good reviews about the processors, but Intel has come forward and made a very big bold announcement to recall all P67/H67 Cougar Point motherboards due to chipset bug last week, because “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.”
Cougar Point (Intel’s 6-series chipsets: H67/P67) has two sets of SATA ports: four that support 3Gbps operation, and two that support 6Gbps operation. Each set of ports requires its own PLL source. The problem in the chipset was traced back to a transistor in the 3Gbps PLL clocking tree. The aforementioned transistor has a very thin gate oxide, which allows you to turn it on with a very low voltage.
Unfortunately in this case Intel biased the transistor with too high of a voltage, resulting in higher than expected leakage current. Depending on the physical characteristics of the transistor the leakage current here can increase over time which can ultimately result in this failure on the 3Gbps ports. The fact that the 3Gbps and 6Gbps circuits have their own independent clocking trees is what ensures that this problem is limited to only ports 2 – 5 off the controller.Intel put together a team of engineers to discover the source of the problem. Based on the timeline it looks like it took them a couple of days to figure it out. Intel then spent a few more days trying to understand the implications of the issue. Finally, late last night, Intel decided the only course of action would be a recall and it halted production of its 6-series chip sets. The fix requires new hardware, which means you will have to exchange your motherboard for a new one. Intel hasn’t posted any instructions on how the recall will be handled other than to contact Intel via its support page or contact the manufacturer of your hardware directly. It seemed that manufacturers were as surprised as everyone else in the market, as the statement comes out all of a sudden without any prior notice to the manufacturers, due to regulatory requirements that this should be made public immediately.
It’s a good thing that Intel come forward and admit the issue and announce a huge recall instead of denying it and saying that “You’re holding it wrong” like some other company from the silicon valley does. Intel will begin shipping the fixed version of the chipset in late February. The recall will reduce Intel’s revenue by around $300 million and cost around $700 million to completely repair and replace affected systems.
SOURCE via Anandtech