Intel officials have announced that the company is recalling the 1.13GHz Pentium III chip it shipped on July 31 because of a problem that could cause certain applications to freeze. According to Intel, only some of the 1.13GHz chips showed the problem. However, the company will recall all the 1.13GHz Pentium III processors that it has shipped to date and will repair the problem in a version of the chip to be released in the future

　　"We found some marginality in the part within certain temperatures within the operating range and certain code sequences [in applications]," said Intel spokesman George Alfs. "We're not happy with the chip and we're going to pull it back."

　　Intel is working with its PC manufacturing customers to recover the processors that have been shipped to users. Out of all the PC manufacturers in North America, only Dell Computer and IBM have shipped significant quantities of the chip.

　　Alfs said the number of 1.13GHz Pentium IIIs that has shipped to date is "small," but he would not elaborate. "We're going to take some time here and rework it. We'll have it back on the market in a couple of months," he said. Those customers with 1.13GHz Pentium III chips should contact their PC vendors for more information about the recall.

　　The move comes at a bad time for Intel. AMD announced on Monday that PC makers are now shipping systems with its 1.13GHz Athlon chip on board, putting Intel at a competitive disadvantage. In May, Intel announced an even larger recall, replacing nearly 1 million motherboards using the 820 chipset, which was hurt by a memory problem.