Intel's Nehalem EX To Gain Error Correction

angry tapir writes "Intel's eight-core Nehalem EX server processor will include a technology derived from its high-end Itanium chips that helps to reduce data corruption and ensure reliable server performance. The processor will include an error correction feature called MCA Recovery, which will detect and fix errors that could otherwise cause systems to crash — it will be able to detect system errors originating in the CPU or system memory and work with the operating system to correct them." Update: 05/27 19:11 GMT by T : Dave Altavilla suggests also Hot Hardware's coverage of the new chip, which includes quite a bit more information.

Comments

Re:x86

[Chris Burke]

Error correction on an x86 chip?

Sweet. Now all those high-end server applications running on x86s that need great uptime can finally join the big boys. [rolls eyes].

Is the demand for x86 Server chips that high? I thought anyone requiring 5 nines (or anything close to it) would never consider using x86?

The story of the server market for the last 10+ years is simple: x86 has been eating everyone else's market share from the bottom up. Commodity pricing > perceived advantages of the proprietary RISC vendors. To the extent that there are real necessary features x86 lacked, it has acquired them as necessary.

There's been correctable ECC on x86 server chips for years. x86 has long since moved up-market past the point where basic RAS features (like ECC) are mandatory. Intel's Xeon has had these features for a long time. AMD Barcelona core was the first to have correctable ECC in the L1 caches -- before it could detect errors but couldn't fix them.

Basically the only new feature here is the ability to notify the OS about uncorrectable errors so that the OS can try to fix the problem by nuking the affected app, reloading a code page from disk or whatever else is appropriate so that a system reboot isn't always necessary on uncorrectable errors.

Yeah this is something the "big boys" already had, fat consolation that will be now that x86 is poised to eat their lunch. Not even Intel themselves could reverse the trend when they tried. They could use features like this to differentiate Itanium all they want, at the end of the day the customer says "yeah that's great, but can you do it in an x86 chip?" This is just them bowing to the demands of the market (in order to make mega $$).