In early September, Intel Corp. was willing to concede that Taiwanese suppliers had a window of opportunity to gain market share in core logic. "We are still producing wafer out of our BX chip set," said David Dan of Intel Taiwan. "The Taiwanese chip set vendors, though, can support the shortage in the market until our introduction of our 820 chip set."

Yet at almost as the same time as Taiwan's earthquake, Intel delayed the release of its 820 chip set, code-named Camino. "The 820 may be delayed until year-end," said the sales manager for one Taiwan mainboard maker. "Then we may or may not have to do a new mask set for the pc board. It could be another two months more of development before we have an 820 mainboard."

Other PC-motherboard makers support this grim scenario. "The 820 is going nowhere for now," said a project manager at a major OEM mainboard maker. "The problem with the 820 now, though, is actually kind of theoretical. Problems occur only when all three RIMMs Rambus in-line memory modules are fully busy. How often does that really happen? It's kind of a computer geek thing."

The Rambus design allows for three memory slots with up to 32 chips each. The third slot in some cases behaves unreliably even when empty, according to reports.

Officials at Intel Taiwan declined to say when the 820 would finally be introduced. They did say, however, that they are looking to ramp up their BX chips set.

What is available now are back inventories of Taiwanese core logic, gray-market BX chip sets and 810 chip sets. "Our customers have little interest in the 810," said the sales manager. "Someone is getting rich on gray-market BX chip sets. We have some inventory of standard Taiwanese core logic. The newer core logic will be delayed, however, because of the quake and the power outage in its aftermath."

All of Taiwan's mainboard makers are in much the same pickle. "Our customers right now don't have much choice: an 810 board is it," said the R&D vice president of a major mainboard maker here. "It has the advantage of taking care of the shortage of core logic and graphics controller at the same time. Graphics chips will be in very short supply for this month, as most are made in Taiwan. If the order is time critical, then an 810 mainboard is about all we can deliver in quantity."

But "the 810 is immensely unpopular," said the project manager. "Some of our customers are willing to wait and work off inventory, and raid the gray market, just because their customers just don't want" an 810.

Hardest hit by the quake are new designs. "New pc-board designs will be delayed by at least four weeks because of the power rationing," said one foreign analyst. "Other components will also be in short supply."

The problem is not just a dearth of core logic, "but of all the other 700 components that go into a mainboard," concurred the project manager. "Some we have in inventory, but others we just ordered on a day-to-day basis. The power shortages have made that ordering strategy fall apart. Products like our new K7 mainboards are especially hard hit."

On the plus side, the Taiwanese government said that 100 percent of power would be restored to northern Taiwan by Oct. 10.

Search words: Taiwan, quake, Camino, core logic