Coppermine bug stops PC shipments
Published: 02 Dec 1999 09:48 GMT
A bug in the high-end Pentium III chip has forced Dell to stop shipping its Optiplex GX110 corporate desktop.
An erratum or glitch in Intel's desktop Pentium III "Coppermine" processors, which have been shipping since October 25, can cause a PC to not boot every time its power button is pressed. The bug has not been found in mobile Pentium III chips, according to Intel.
"We've implemented a stop ship, which is a due diligence move to screen for the erratum," Dell spokesman Ken Bissell said Wednesday. "To my knowledge we've had no problems with systems we've shipped out with Coppermine."
That means Dell won't build Optiplex 110 PCs while it runs some of the systems through tests to ensure there isn't a problem. Once test results are in and the company is satisfied with the systems' performance, Dell will resume shipment of the desktop. The delay isn't expected to be longer than a few days.
Intel, meanwhile, said the glitch is found in only a few Pentium III chips and no such problems have been reported yet by end users -- the bug was discovered in lab testing. The erratum, which could crop up at any point, could cause a PC's owner to have to push its power button a second time before it would boot.
Intel says that it has stepped up its testing procedures in order to weed out chips that exhibit the symptoms of the erratum before they ship to PC makers.
If the owner of a Coppermine-powered PC experiences booting trouble, Intel says that person should seek the assistance of the PC maker it was purchased from.
Root cause at 'wafer level' Intel would not say exactly what the cause of the erratum is. "The root cause is something we'll fix at the wafer level," said Intel spokesman George Alfs.
The fix should be present in the next stepping of the chip. That means Intel will implement a fix for the problem in the next Pentium III clockspeed it releases. The next release is expected to be a 750MHz chip early next year.
Other PC makers did not immediately return calls from ZDNN US.
Take me to the Intel PIII special
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