Graphics chips can be just good enough

According to Melvin A. Breuer, a professor at USC, while chips used for security, accounting, and science, minor flaws are unacceptable, but complex graphics chips don't need to be thrown into the waste basket, he reckons.

Which is good news for ATI, Nvidia and firms producing graphics chips, but bad news for firms like Intel and AMD making CPUs.

According to this article, 60 per cent of graphics chips with a single defect can decode video files and no one will notice any diference.

The National Science Foundation has given $1.1 million to Breuer and his colleagues at the USC Viterbi School to further support the error tolerance effect. µ