Samsung offers full refund for Intel chip

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of memory chips, said Tuesday it would fully refund customers who had bought its personal computers built with a flawed chipset from Intel Corp.

US giant Intel said recently it had discovered a design problem in the new chipset that is expected to cost it $1 billion in repairs and lost revenue while also delaying the release of computers using its new microprocessors.

"There are six PC line-ups released in Korea and one in the US, and we plan to fully refund or exchange the product in question," Samsung spokesman James Chung said.

Intel recently released its second-generation Core processors, code-named Sandy Bridge, that combine graphics and computing on a single piece of silicon.

But it said Monday that the chipset connecting the Sandy Bridge processors to other parts of the PC system had a problem that could potentially cause hard-disk or DVD drives to malfunction.

Samsung, however, said there would be no financial impact on its business as total payment will be funded by Intel.

(c) 2011 AFP