Bumpgate
Bumpgate
Bumpgate refers to reliability issues that were present in many graphics processing units manufactured roughly from 2007 to 2010. These reliability issues stemmed from an incorrect combination of integrated circuit packaging elements that led to them failing prematurely. GPUs packaged using ball grid array technology would have the solder balls that connect the GPU to the motherboard crack under thermal stress. This would sever the connection to the motherboard, making the GPU unusable.
Corporations such as Nvidia, ATI and Microsoft suffered greatly from this ordeal. In one example, Microsoft incurred costs of around 1.15 billion US dollars for repairing defective GPUs in Xbox 360 game consoles.[2]
History
Nvidia
In early 2007, customers of new laptops and desktop PCs that contained GeForce 8 Series GPUs reported to manufacturers that many were showing issues. These issues were of a wide variety with examples such as horizontal lines on the screen, failure to reboot and unexpected shutdowns[3]. Despite this many manufacturers could not replicate the issues that their customers had reported, a phenomenon known as no fault found[4]. This failure to replicate the issue combined with the variety in problems reported led to a lack of focus on Nvidia and thus the same GPU families still continued to be used in consumer products into 2008.
In July 2008 Nvidia releases a form 8-K to its shareholders informing them that Nvidia would take a $150 million to $200 million US dollar charge to cover for the anticipated cost of repair due to a weak die/packaging material used in certain GPUs.[5] In the same month Dell releases BIOS updates for certain models that contained Nvidia GPUs. The update would change the fan curve to cool the GPU better[6]
References
This article "Bumpgate" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Bumpgate. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
- ↑ Demerjian, Charlie (14 October 2008). "Apple Knowledgebase says G92s are defective". The Inquirer. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
- ↑ Their, Dave (9 July 2015). "The $1.15 Billion Hardware Failure That Nearly Killed The Xbox". Forbes. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
- ↑ Nvidia’s GPU failures: A case for prognostics and health management pg 2
- ↑ No-fault-found and intermittent failures in electronic products
- ↑ "Archived Copy". Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2008-07-10.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
- ↑ "Archived Copy". Archived from the original on 2008-08-30. Retrieved 2008-08-30.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
