D'oh. It appears that the new Intel Sandy Bridge chipset has a flaw that can't be fixed with firmware or software. The issue has required a silicon redesign to fix and some systems shipped before the issue was discovered meaning that there are some Sandy Bridge machines in the wild already that will suffer from the issue.
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As far as silicon issues go, it could be worse. The affected machines will continue to work, the issue is with the SATA controller and performance will degrade over time. That means that while your rig might be fast right now, a year or so down the road things could be totally different with IO performance.
Intel is seeing some significant recalls in its future. The chipmaker has reduced expected revenue by $300 million to fix the issue and make the new version of the chipset design. The issue is specifically with the Intel 6 Series chipset known as Cougar Point. The total cost to repair and replace materials and systems on the market already is expected to hit $700 million. Intel doesn't expect the chipset issue to significantly impact its full year revenue. Intel expects to resume P67 chipset shipments in late February and meet full demand by March or April.
Sandy Bridge "Cougar Point" chipset has design flaw, recalls imminent
Intel sets aside $700 million to fix and replace affected systems.
