Intel Haswell CPUs suffering from USB 3.0 issues after wake-up from S3 standby

An internal Intel document leaked to Hardware.Info reveals the chip giant is struggling with the USB 3.0 implementation in its upcoming Haswell products. The site reports Intel discovered that Haswell systems will experience issues when waking from S3 sleep mode when devices are connected through USB 3.0. The issues are said to be minor problems like blank pages displaying in Adobe Reader or video playback stopping, rather than continuing. Intel is requesting its partners to accept this issue, before it will supply them with processors. Hardware.Info points out that it appears to be hardware-based issue, and heard Intel plans to fix it in a future processing stepping revision.

In the document, Intel purportedly informs manufacturers that a system with Haswell inside, when waking from S3 sleep mode, will experience issues with devices connected through USB 3.0. For example this would result in blank pages displaying in Acrobat Reader PDFs or video playback stopping, rather than continuing. A quick fix would be to restart the failing application.

For that reason, Intel apparently describes the problem only as a nuisance for end users, as there would be no serious consequences like data loss. The company indicates the issues will not impact the release of the Haswell processor series, but it is of the intention of resolving this problem in a future processor stepping. So it looks like Haswell will launch as planned, even if the company is still researching what other consequences this issue can possibly have.

Dutch tech site Tweakers.net backs up the story but claims the issue will only be present in the first batch of Haswell chips for laptops and ultrabooks.