Hewlett-Packard Co. said Friday it had discovered a design flaw in some memory chips used in Compaq and H-P notebook computers and would replace the components for about 900,000 of the laptops.
Also on Friday, No. 1 chipmaker Intel Corp. said it was recalling an unspecified number of chipsets, code-named Grantsdale, that Intel had launched earlier in the week.
Intel said it found a manufacturing flaw that could lead a computer using the chipset -- an assembly of chips designed to work together -- to malfunction. It did not specify the number of chipsets affected by the flaw.
The memory chips, when used in conjunction with other standard components found in the notebook PC industry, could cause the computers to freeze up, corrupt memory and lead to other problems, said H-P, the No. 2 computer maker.
The chips are made by Infineon Technologies AG, Micron Technology Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Winbond Electronics Corp., Palo Alto, California-based H-P said.
H-P spokesman Mike Hockey said the two companies’ recalls were not related.
The simultaneous announcement of the manufacturing errors was unlikely to have a major impact on PC sales, but could cause some supply chain delays and give pause to some buyers, said Shane Rau, a PC analyst for market research firm IDC.
“When you suddenly pull components or say that the components are being evaluated for errors, then it has an effect all the way down the line,” Rau said. “There could be some incremental losses of revenue here.”
IDC forecasts sales of desktop, notebook and low-end server PCs to rise 13.5 percent this year to 175 million.
Palo Alto, California-based H-P said problems can arise when the chips, or memory modules, are used in conjunction with chipsets made by Intel, a separate video graphics controller and Intel’s Pentium 4 for mobile PCs or the Pentium M processor and a certain power management technology.
“Others face the same issue,” Hockey said, referring to other PC makers.
Officials at Dell Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. were not immediately available to comment.
H-P said it will be notifying customers and its partners about the replacement program. The company said that the probability of the problem occurring with the memory modules in question was “low and dependent on the user’s environment.”
Customers can go to H-P’s Web site and run a test to determine if their notebook PC contains the suspect combination of components, Hockey said. If they do, H-P will mail out a replacement module and postage-paid envelope in which to return the old memory module.