The Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau has been doing a bit of
investigating and has arrested four engineers working for Intel's OEM
partners (names not disclosed) for flogging Engineering Sample (ES)
processors on eBay. ES processors are intended strictly for
qualification testing purposes for development of new products by OEM's
and are only loaned to them under strict non-disclosure agreements,
hence putting these on eBay is illegal. The Bureau searched the suspects
houses last month and found 178 ES CPU's, worth around $800,000. Note
that this value seems to be somewhat high, as it would make each CPU
worth around $4,500. We will update this article if new values come to
light. Also, this is not a new operation that has been busted, since the
suspects had admitted to selling around 500 ES CPU's since 2009. For
their efforts, the fab four now face five years in prison.
It should be noted for anyone contemplating the purchase of such dodgy
CPU's on eBay or similar places, that they may be overstressed and
contain faults, due to the intensive and sometimes destructive testing
they go through. Just don't do it, kids.
Source: TechEYE
No comments:
Post a Comment