Intel Corp has admitted that there is a bug in its new 0.18 micron Pentium III processors, which can cause problems when a system based on the chip is booted. Intel spokesperson George Alfs said that the bug, which Intel prefers to refer as an erratum, affects one to two percent of all the processors.
The bug means that a user may have to press the ‘on’ button twice to boot the system. Alfs said that the problem had stopped the shipping of one model in Dell Computer’s Optiplex line but said he knew of no other OEM problems.
Intel will not be dealing with the problem when its upgrades the processor clockspeed to 750MHz early next year. Alfs said the problem will be would be rectified when Intel next upgrades its manufacturing process, called processor stepping. Alfs did not know when this would happen. He was tight-lipped about the details of bug, saying only, the problem’s in the die, not in the packaging.
Keith Diefendorff, analyst at the Microprocessor Report, says that the bug is a common one. Diefendorff comments: I think it’s probably very insignificant in the big scheme of things. This is a common type of problem. Intel can probably screen pretty effectively for it until they can get in a fix. They know the root cause and I suspect it will be very easy to fix. They can probably spin a new stepping very quickly.
