CPU Failures Hurt Intel's Bottom Line

[Guest]

Intel revealed during its Q4 2016 earnings call that unspecified CPU failures have impacted its bottom line. Intel enjoyed record Q4 revenue and a record $59.4 billion in overall 2016 revenue, but CPU failures reduced the Data Center Group's financials.

CPU Failures Hurt Intel's Bottom Line : Read more

 

[gggplaya]

Giving room for AMD to take some marketshare with their new zen based CPU.

 

[dgingeri]

Does it say CPUs specifically were the cause? I don't see it specify CPUs in what is quoted.

I do, however, know of a significant problem with their X710 10Gb CNA that cause significant problems early last year. Many of the X710 CNAs had a problem with stalling and corrupting data under heavy use, which rendered it useless for a product my company was working on at the time. We ended up going back to the X520 in order to get our product out because we couldn't trust the X710. I'm fairly certain that impacted their bottom line pretty well. My company at the time used returned about 300 of those X710s to Intel for them to analyze for the failures, which is no small change. (That was just the test phase, not production, or there would have been many more.)

 

[3ogdy]

Does it say CPUs specifically were the cause? I don't see it specify CPUs in what is quoted.

I do, however, know of a significant problem with their X710 10Gb CNA that cause significant problems early last year. Many of the X710 CNAs had a problem with stalling and corrupting data under heavy use, which rendered it useless for a product my company was working on at the time. We ended up going back to the X520 in order to get our product out because we couldn't trust the X710. I'm fairly certain that impacted their bottom line pretty well. My company at the time used returned about 300 of those X710s to Intel for them to analyze for the failures, which is no small change. (That was just the test phase, not production, or there would have been many more.)

" Intel replied that the failures are limited to the Intel Atom Processor C2000 product family, which is used primarily for storage and networking infrastructure."

 

[dgingeri]

Does it say CPUs specifically were the cause? I don't see it specify CPUs in what is quoted.

I do, however, know of a significant problem with their X710 10Gb CNA that cause significant problems early last year. Many of the X710 CNAs had a problem with stalling and corrupting data under heavy use, which rendered it useless for a product my company was working on at the time. We ended up going back to the X520 in order to get our product out because we couldn't trust the X710. I'm fairly certain that impacted their bottom line pretty well. My company at the time used returned about 300 of those X710s to Intel for them to analyze for the failures, which is no small change. (That was just the test phase, not production, or there would have been many more.)

" Intel replied that the failures are limited to the Intel Atom Processor C2000 product family, which is used primarily for storage and networking infrastructure."

Ah, didn't see that. Well, I'm fairly certain the X710 thing didn't help either.

 

[blazorthon]

That makes sense. The little CPUs are often put in systems that only barely meet minimum requirements. If there's a small error made in what the chips need to avoid heat damage, then they fry.

 

[damric]

No Skylake CPUs that used JEDEC DDR3 were listed as failing.

 

[dstarr3]

Giving room for AMD to take some marketshare with their new zen based CPU.

Except AMD have no CPU vying for market share with Intel's Atom processors, like the ones this article states are affected.

 

[brucewhain]

...to other lucrative "adjacencies,"

 

[photonboy]

Blazorthon,
Nobody said they failed due to heat. In fact, I doubt it considering they have a "workaround" so it could be some errata bug that is fixed with a firmware update.

 

[slidai]

I've always had Intel chips. When I built my new gaming rig a couple of months ago, after a day of use, it crashed on start up over and over. Turns out it was the cpu.

 

[nyannyan]

Blazorthon,
Nobody said they failed due to heat. In fact, I doubt it considering they have a "workaround" so it could be some errata bug that is fixed with a firmware update.

Actually, it's still possible it was a heat issue that was due to crappy heat transfer material. We know Intel's been cheaping out on that front.

 

[blazorthon]

Blazorthon,
Nobody said they failed due to heat. In fact, I doubt it considering they have a "workaround" so it could be some errata bug that is fixed with a firmware update.

I wasn't saying that I knew it was heat that caused their current problem, only that a lot of failures have been caused by heat regarding similar products in the past.

Besides, it's not often a CPU fails for reasons other than heat/overvoltage damage. Any fix/workaround could simply be a new stepping, a firmware/microcode change, request for BIOS updates, or anything like that to either slightly improve efficiency, cause slight throttling, or more.

If there was crashing or other issues that were repeatable, but not inherently damaging to the CPU, then I wouldn't suspect heat.

 

[toesis]

i wish they would use good thermal interface materials below the teh IHS "integrated heat spreader. i wouldn't recommend Intel's 7xxx series chips because of this