Is it Halloween already? Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is bringing a discontinued chipset back from the grave, zombie-style.
Citing "specific requests from computer makers" after "extensive discussions" on the topic, the chip giant has agreed to ship out support chips for the recently launched and even more recently recalled chipsets for its Sandy Bridge processor series. Not willy-nilly, of course -- the buggy chips will only be shipped to system builders who promise to use 'em only in configurations not affected by the bug. Otherwise, you'll have to wait a couple of weeks for a corrected version to start shipping.
The problem lies with the SATA storage controller, leaving certain controller ports unaffected while the performance of other ports (controlled by the same chip) degrades over time. Many a notebook model may never see any problem, since these systems rarely use more than a couple of hard drives; the two high-speed ports supporting the latest and greatest SATA standard are probably the only ones in use to begin with. The bug only affects the slower SATA ports.
Thus, Samsung and others may have jumped the gun when they announced blanket recalls of Sandy Bridge systems, while Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), and others who waited to make grand promises might not need to repair or replace quite as many systems after all.
This is somewhat bad news for Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), since its window to exploit Intel's weakness just closed a little bit; the recall may not be as extensive as originally thought. That's hardly a disaster, though, because AMD was never really equipped to strike at this exposed jugular anyway.
Add Intel to your Foolish watchlist to keep track of further developments in this story of bugs versus zombies
