TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Intel Reveals Flaw in Orion Chipset: The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker said a flaw in its Orion chipset could sharply reduce the transfer of data, and it promised to be more open about disclosing such faults to consumers. Intel Corp. said it was aware of the Orion problem and told its own customers, but prevented them from telling consumers. The Orion chipset, known internally as 82450, is one of a number of auxiliary chips that supplies the Pentium Pro microprocessor. An uncorrected chipset could limit the amount of so-called I/O bus traffic, or data transfer, that a computer handles to as low as 5 megabytes a second, instead of the regular 25 to 55 megabytes, Intel spokesman Howard High said, estimating that 1% to 2% of all users would experience the poor performance.