Intel said on Thursday a defect in its 820 chipset, which helps the microprocessor brain communicate with the rest of the system, could cause some systems to suddenly reset, reboot or fail and distort data in some cases.

The US chip giant said the flaw was limited to a small number of Intel-equipped computers, which began shipping in November, and pledged to replace all faulty parts. Taiwan's computer hardware companies, which made 64 per cent of the world's motherboards and 49 per cent of its notebook computers in 1999, said only a small percentage of their products were exposed to the problem. Taiwan's Commercial Times newspaper quoted Asustek Computer Inc's Vice-President Tseng Chiang-sheng as saying the flaw affected less than five per cent of output, though shortages of memory, driver and controller chips would affect production.