34 Design Flaws in 20 Days of Intel Core Duo

Pray_4_Mojo writes "Geek.com is reporting that Intel's errata (bug) documentation shows that the Intel Core Duo chip has 34 known issues found in the 20 days since the launch of the iMac Core Duo. (you can read the list) with only plans to fix one of them. While bugs in hardware is nothing new (the P4 has 64 known issues, at this time Intel does not plan to fix a single one) this marks one of the first times that Intel released a processor with known bugs, and some of the bugs are of higher severity than in the past. Also alarming is the rate the flaws have been found, at one and half per day since the launch of the iMac Core Duo."

Comments

"one of the first times"?

[sczimme]

this marks one of the first times that Intel released a processor with known bugs

No: either it is the first time or it is not. There can be only one... first time.

and some of the bugs are of higher severity then in the past

then != than

Re:"one of the first times"?

[Golias]

this marks one of the first times that Intel released a processor with known bugs

No: either it is the first time or it is not. There can be only one... first time.

I disagree with the mod who marked you "Off-topic." It may look like you are just being a grammar nazi, but you raise a valid point.

Saying "this marks one of the first times that Intel released a processor with known bugs" is pretty much the same as saying, "this is not the first time that Intel has released a processor with known bugs, but I want it to sound like alarmingly bad news for Apple."

20 days?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a little disohnest to use the phrasing "Core Duo chip has 34 known issues found in the 20 days since the launch of the iMac Core Duo."

Most of these bugs were found well before the release of Core Duo. Many of the bugs are listed as having been observed by Intel only. That means the verficiation teams did hit these issues, either with very bizarre code setup, or doing something that's probably not technically legal anyway. Odds of seeing most of it in an end-user platform are very unlikely.

Re:Faster

[Golias]

What I am saying is that in general, what's the use of getting better and faster at finding bugs if there aren't plans to fix it?

Because the purpose of finding silicon bugs is almsot never to fix it. Fixing CPU bugs is often impractical. You find the flaws so you can route around them. This is the case with every consumer chip on the market, including the one you are using to read this right now.

Re:Up front

[ciroknight]

Take a look at the error list for a second. Over 50% of them are caused by dropping the processor into Debug mode, with over 75% of them only being observed by Intel themselves. Now, certainly there are more bugs reported so far, but does that mean that there are actually more bugs, or that Intel is getting better at finding bugs and reporting them?

Time will only tell.