Intel"s product recall of certain Sandy Bridge chipsets, which was initially estimated to cost the company around $300 million, is expected to come closer to the region of $1 billion. BusinessWeek is reporting that several manufacturers are either delaying orders or cancelling sales altogether in an attempt to soften the blow as Intel scrambles to fix the flaw.
HP has already decided to delay a product announcement in San Francisco for next week, and also confirmed that the availability of certain products will be "impacted" by the recall. Marlene Somsak, a spokesperson for HP, stressed that there are many other unaffected products that the company sells; "HP has the broadest lineup of PCs in the industry and there are many HP choices using a wide variety of processors."
In addition, Gigabyte and MSI have halted sales of affected chipsets, with Gigabyte announcing a product exchange scheme and MSI offering a temporary solution on their website. Gigabyte have suggested customers instead use the first two SATA ports on the motherboard instead, unaffected by the flaw. Asus, meanwhile, have yet to announce their plan of action, but they hope to have a solution by the end of the business day.
The affected chipsets are in the 6 Series "Cougar Point" range, and have only been shipping since January 9th. Intel is hoping for a minimal impact from the recall, owing to the small amount of affected products, and is working with chipset manufacturers such as MSI to come up with a solution.