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Major Linux/Athlon CPU bug discovered

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the a-bug-a-day-keeps-alan-at-play dept.

GeorgeFrancisco writes "I recently installed the nVidia drivers so I could play TuxRacer on my Athlon. Problem is it kept inexplicably hanging Linux. Now I know why. The CPU bug affects Athlon/Duron/Athlon MP AGP users. Fortunately there's a way around it, and: "Alan [Cox] is going to try to add some kind of Athlon/AGP CPU bug detection code to the kernel so that it will be able to auto-downgrade to 4K pages when necessary." Read more on the Gentoo Linux site."

2 of 402 comments (clear)

  1. Re:NO AMD BASHING by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AMD didn't turn interesting until the Athlon came out. The previous versions of its processors were decidedly inferior. This is *worse* than recalling for a bad, rarely used function call. I can't take a processor back 6 months after I bought it because it sucks, but I can get it replaced if it has a bona-fide bug.

    If this is a bug in the processor, AMD really should fix it and offer replacement processors to those who need it. If they don't, and they expect you to patch your OS instead, then that definitely shakes my faith in that company. When you're an artist dependent on OpenGL, you can't have problems like this.

    And finally...

    Why are you worried about running 32-bit code on a 64-bit processor? 64-bit processors are supposed to run 64-bit code. Intel's not marketing 64-bit processors to replace desktop computers (today), they're for servers and high-end graphics with custom code. They don't NEED to run 32-bit code. I hardly think that's a point against Intel, especially considering they don't make it a big secret that 32-bit code runs slower on it.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  2. Annoyed at something else. by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The article notes that AMD has been proclaiming the bug in public for a while.

    What irks me is this: I got hit with this bug. I posted bug reports to Debian, with NVidia, on different forum, report lock-ups in certain open-GL situations. I got generally hand-waving "read the fucking manual" responses.

    As the article notes, this isn't just a problem with AMD. It suggests that there's an ongoing problem with troubleshooting and resolving the sorts of issues that desktop users are going to have in Linux. (And "paying for support" would not have resolved much, would it have? The problem is the lack of coordination, not the lack of money.)