Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Intel was sued in a federal court in San Jose, California, on Tuesday, based on claims that the chipmaker's 13th and 14th generation desktop processors from 2022 and 2023 are defective.
The plaintiff, Mark Vanvalkenburgh of Orchard Park, New York, purchased an Intel Core i7-13700K from Best Buy in January 2023, according to the complaint [PDF].
"After purchasing the product, Plaintiff learned that the processor was defective, unstable, and crashing at high rates," the complaint claims. "The processor caused issues in his computer, including random screen blackouts and random computer restarts. These issues were not resolved even after he attempted to install a patch issued by Intel for its 13th Generation processors."
The potential class-action lawsuit cites various media reports and social media posts dating back to December 2022 that describe problems with Intel's 13th and 14th generation processors, known as Raptor Lake. These reports document unexplained failures and system instability, as well as a higher-than-expected rate of product returns.
"By late 2022 or early 2023, Intel knew of the defect," the complaint says. "Intel’s Products undergo pre-release and post-release testing. Through these tests, Intel became aware of the defect in the processors."
And because Intel continued making marketing claims touting the speed and performance of its products, with no mention of any defect, the complaint alleges that Intel committed fraud by omission, breached implied warranty, and violated New York General Business Law.
Intel acknowledged its chips had a problem in a July 2024 forum post. "Based on extensive analysis of Intel Core 13th/14th Gen desktop processors returned to us due to instability issues, we have determined that elevated operating voltage is causing instability issues in some 13th/14th Gen desktop processors," explained Intel communications manager Thomas Hannaford. "Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor."
In September, Chipzilla provided more details with the publication of a root cause analysis of the issue, which the company refers to as "Vmin Shift Instability." Vmin refers to the minimum voltage for a chip to operate properly.
"Intel has localized the Vmin Shift Instability issue to a clock tree circuit within the IA core which is particularly vulnerable to reliability aging under elevated voltage and temperature," the chipmaker said. "Intel has observed these conditions can lead to a duty cycle shift of the clocks and observed system instability."
Intel has issued three microcode patches to address the issue: 0x125 in June 2024 to adjust its Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB) algorithm; 0x129 in August 2024 to address high voltages requested by the processor; and 0x12B, announced in September 2024, which incorporates the previous two updates and also prevents the processor from requesting elevated voltage when idle or under light load.
The chipmaker also announced a two-year warranty extension for certain affected chips in August, and expanded the program with additional support details the following month.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Snotnose on Sunday November 10, @03:28PM (1 child)
Boeing and Intel should merge, it will make the bankruptcy paperwork much easier.
Sure would be nice if Congress would re-ban stock buybacks but that'll never happen under Trump.
Old and busted: erectile dysfuntion. New hotness: Ballzheimers
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday November 12, @04:11PM
Just Boeing? I haven't seen any competence whatever from any corporation at all this century. The CEOs and boards are incompetent and apathetic, and workers aren't paid well enough to give a shit.
The new great depression will be here soon. Right wing taking over Europe and America? Yep. Minimum wage no longer a living wage? Check. HUGE income disparity? It has always caused depression. Isolationism? Hard times are coming.
A Russian operative has infiltrated the highest level of our government. Where's Joe McCarthy when we need him?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 10, @06:35PM
CEO Andy Grove was lauded for openness, transparency, honesty, and generally just being a stellar businessman. Then on his watch, Intel tried to deny, minimize, and stonewall the math problem in the first Pentium chips. Actually said the bug was not a serious problem, the results were good enough, because business customers don't need perfect accuracy. The controversy quickly turned stormy, and soon Intel was backpedaling, finally offering to replace all the defective Pentiums.
I don't know if this lawsuit's accusations can be considered entirely fair, but given the history of both Intel and businesses in general, my guess is that Intel deserves some blame and censure. Everything I've heard about working for Intel is that they are a hell of a sweatshop. When put under extreme pressure, many will get "expedient", so to speak.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday November 10, @07:19PM
The plaintiff was running Windows.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday November 10, @08:58PM
Does the New York General Business law apply in California then? The rest of the charges sound like what's been published in the press, and occasionally admitted.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Monday November 11, @07:31PM
How long is the lifetime of the CPUs if they run without the "elevated voltage"? As far as we could read, the issue has something to do with oxidation. I could imagine that happen at lower voltages, too, maybe just a little bit later.
For the record, I have a ThinkPad X380, lovely machine, which freezes dead when anything is plugged into USB-C (and occasionally at other times). I looked into the schematic ("Compal STORM3"), and that USB port goes straight into the "Kabylake". i5-8350U, 8th generation Core i. i'm a bit miffed, because that's the rare 16GB RAM (soldered) version. Am I just unlucky?