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Erratum Plagues Quad-Core Opterons, Phenoms
theraindog writes "Errata are not uncommon with new processors, but a problem with the TLB logic in AMD's quad-core Opteron and Phenom processors appears to be quite serious. The erratum is so severe that AMD has issued a 'stop ship' order on all quad-core Opterons. AMD has also blamed this bug for the delay of the 2.4GHz Phenom, despite the fact that the erratum is unrelated to clock speed. A BIOS-based workaround for the issue has been made available to motherboard makers, but it apparently carries a 10-20% performance penalty. What's more disturbing is that AMD knew of the erratum and the potential performance hit associated with fixing it before it launched the Phenom processor. Hardware provided to the press for reviews did not include the fix, conveniently overstating Phenom performance."
He characterized the issue as a race condition in the TLB logic "where the other guy wins who isn't supposed to win,"
This pretty much describes the college admissions process, as well.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Intel will have copied these features and have similar problems.
Just wondering - if a new customer buys a quad core phenom, just to run some super elite gamerz rig running Vista .... does it really matter if the CPU is going to generate bad results, or crash at some point ? Its not like the operating system and other code running on the buggy processor isnt equally likely to break something as well.
... if a blind, retarded midget (Vista operating system), gets into a car with a broken crankshaft and square wheels (busted phenom CPU), then is anyone going to lose any sleep ?
To use a car analogy