Monday, July 29th 2024
AMD Zen 5 Recall Caused by a Typo?
AMD Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop processors were supposed to start selling on July 31, 2024, but the launch has since been delayed. Since then, social media has been abuzz with theory crafting behind what could be the cause of the delay. AMD's announcement of the delay mentions: "During final checks, we found the initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations," causing some to speculate if there are design flaws such as the ones affecting Intel's 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core desktop processors. A picture doing rounds on social media has a more goofy explanation: there is a glaring typo on the product label printed on the integrated heatspreader (IHS) of the processors.
Apparently, some of the first batches of Ryzen 9000 processors see the brand extensions mislabeled. Ryzen 7 9700X is printed as "Ryzen 9 9700X." This error in the brand extension may have been easily "patched" if it was on the retail packaging (the box), where hardware manufacturers tend to fix typos by simply pasting stickers on them. You can't do this with the IHS, which is a key component of the processor's cooling mechanism. Also, since times immemorial, chip labels (information printed on the chip) have served as crucial last resorts for accuracy of information such as the chip's exact model number, steppings or revisions (if any), and production serial numbers, besides the chip's national origin, which determines the applicable import tariffs. A typo here could prove problematic. We're not entirely sure how AMD is fixing these errors with mere 1-2 week delays. It's likely that they're recalling the affected batch and simply replacing inventory in the channel with "good" batches. The recalled chips will simply have their IHS reprinted.
Source:
Ian Cutress (Twitter)
Apparently, some of the first batches of Ryzen 9000 processors see the brand extensions mislabeled. Ryzen 7 9700X is printed as "Ryzen 9 9700X." This error in the brand extension may have been easily "patched" if it was on the retail packaging (the box), where hardware manufacturers tend to fix typos by simply pasting stickers on them. You can't do this with the IHS, which is a key component of the processor's cooling mechanism. Also, since times immemorial, chip labels (information printed on the chip) have served as crucial last resorts for accuracy of information such as the chip's exact model number, steppings or revisions (if any), and production serial numbers, besides the chip's national origin, which determines the applicable import tariffs. A typo here could prove problematic. We're not entirely sure how AMD is fixing these errors with mere 1-2 week delays. It's likely that they're recalling the affected batch and simply replacing inventory in the channel with "good" batches. The recalled chips will simply have their IHS reprinted.
87 Comments on AMD Zen 5 Recall Caused by a Typo?
AMD needs to get home all the CPUs from all the OEM's and retailers. One package per each, thousands of retailers/OEMs, hundreds of thousands of packages.
High priority air shipping is extremely expensive compared to freight shipping. It's not unreal that they went this way, though. It's all bout the money, after all.
They need to remove the incorrectly-printed heatspreaders and put on the new ones (newly laser engraved). Now I doubt that this is doable within that time-window even with air transport.
What does not make sense is why did they put different release date for Ryzen 9s. For those, for some reason, they need one extra week on top extra week for R5s and R7s.
You don't ship twice in order to save on shipping.
That’s a real problem. Not like the one Intel faces.
Anyway. I hope they don’t delay the release of the beloved 3Ds.
According to its batch number, it was also manufactured week 43, 2016, which is also super late for a QS processor. I guess this was a test unit before I bought it from that American dude in 2017. It seemed unused too. It's been mine ever since.
As for the CCD placed under the central area, I'd like to see that, too, but I'm not sure how much reality is in such expectation.
Its not like the first patch is the only patch they can ever make. Hell, they could even throw the returned first patch with the typo into the trash if they wanted to. Lol!
Also, we don't know if this affects retail only, making the amount much smaller. I mean, I'm not sure HP or Lenovo is prepared to recall all prebuilts just for this..I'm guessing they might give reviewers less headroom for Ryzen 5/7 this time, and to compensate they'll let the Ryzen 9 reviews come later.
On the other hand, they could just let Ryzen 9 get reviewed first like planned..
sorry couldnt resist
Any hardware defect would have delayed by months.