Damage limitation
Possibly inspired by the work of some of its channel partners, Intel has announced it will resume shipping the flawed 6 series chipset, but only to OEMs who will be building it into systems with configurations that aren't affected by the issue.
Our understanding is that the design error specifically affects the SATA 3 ports in the Cougar Point chipset for Sandy Bridge CPUs. However there are also two SATA 6 ports in the chip and, as long as drives are only connected to them, there will be no danger of an issue. So systems with two or fewer drives connected to the SATA 6 ports, will be fine.
Intel was presumably aware of this compromise when it first encountered the design flaw but, to its credit and considerable cost, decided to err on the side of caution and stop shipping the lot. Now that the dust has settled a bit, the chip giant seems to have realised there's a way to limit some of the cost and disruption to itself, its partners and their customers.
But considerable disruption there has been. We still haven't had any indication from the channel that Intel plans to compensate its partners for the considerable cost of the recalling Sandy Bridge boards and systems, and the lost revenue from cancelled orders.
If the whole thing now looks like costing Intel less than the $700 million it has accounted for, we're confident there are a few channel partners that would be grateful for a bit more assistance in dealing with a problem not of their own making.
One bit of good news is that Intel has started manufacturing the new, improved Cougar Point chip already and expects to begin shipping in the middle of this month.
