NVIDIA revealed that they have discovered some issues with certain laptop graphic processing units (GPU) which have reportedly been shipped in "significant quantities".

According to the reports, the company has not yet established exactly what is causing the higher failure rates on these units. They suspect though that it may relate to the packaging material used with some of the chips and the thermal design in some laptops.

To solve this problem, the company has released a driver which will make system fans work much sooner to reduce the thermal stress on the chips. Derek Perez, spokesman for NVIDIA, pointed out that the driver was provided directly to the laptop makers.

In light of this unfortunate incident, NVIDIA will be taking a US$ 150 to US$ 200 million hit in their second-quarter earnings to cover the costs of repairing and replacing the defective GPUs. In addition, their stock also dropped by 24 percent to US$ 13.56.