Intel heeft toegegeven dat er serieuze bugs in hun Memory Translator Hub zitten waardoor er memory errors kunnen optreden als i820 en i840 borden met SDRAM geheugen worden uitgerust. Als gevolg heeft Intel 3 moederbord designs van hun roadmap moeten schrappen (zie ook deze posting). Omdat weinig gebruikers zin hebben om het peperdure Rambus geheugen te gaan gebruiken verwachten analysten dat deze zaak een groot probleem kan vormen voor Intel. Dell is inmiddels al gestopt met het leveren van SDRAM bij hun i820 / i840 based PC's.
According to Intel, memory errors may result from the combined use of the memory-repeater hub (known as MRH-S), which is used to translate native RDRAM support to SDRAM, and ECC (error correction coding).Intel said it believes few customers will be affected since most 820 and 840 chip set customers using ECC, commonly in workstation and servers, are likely to have gone with Rambus memory for greater performance.
However, customers seeking a lower-cost server or workstation solution may have elected to go with less-expensive SDRAM over RDRAM in order to get the highest amount of memory for their money.
"We are informing vendors that certain server platforms using the memory repeater hub as well as the error correction coding have been experiencing memory issues or errors," said Dan Francisco, an Intel spokesman.
If the problem is actually tied to just the memory-translation hub, it could spell big trouble for Intel, said Mike Feibus, principal analyst at Mercury Research in Scottsdale, Ariz.
"We're predicting that more than half of the 840 chip sets that will ship this quarter will be configured with SDRAM," Feibus said. "So if there's trouble with the memory translator, that could pose major problems for Intel."
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