It seems like it would be trivial for them to reduce quality control and have customers just “deal with” chips that aren’t as stable. How come they aren’t doing this?
It seems like it would be trivial for them to reduce quality control and have customers just “deal with” chips that aren’t as stable. How come they aren’t doing this?
I remember when Intel made Pentium CPU’s that had a small math error in some very specific floating point calculations. They were so afraid to damage their reputation (which was still excellent at the time) that they offered every Pentium owner across the globe (including me) a free new Pentium CPU without the bug, shipped to us at their expense, and even sending out a courier to pick up the old CPU (again for free) a few weeks later when we had time to swap them. That was basically the opposite of what you’re suggesting.
I think you are rewriting history. They did this only when they got forced to by revolting customers
Well yes, obviously there was outside pressure involved. Intel tried to hide and downplay the problem at first, but as the negative attention grew they pivoted to replacing all chips quite fast (in a month or so). I may have oversimplified a bit, but rewriting history goes a bit far, don’t you think?
More recently didn’t Intel fire some planet manager that was knowing shipping out CPUs with literal rust on vital components
The programming language? Yea, that’s a fireable offence.
/S