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Bug in Pentium III Xeon Processors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bad-time-for-intel dept.

Doug Muth writes "There is an article in Wired that talks about a bug in their Pentium III Xeon chips that causes crashes when "when a system is pushed to its highest performance limit", whatever that is supposed to mean. Fortunately, the bug is only present in two specific variations of the chip, the 550 Mhz versions that have either 512 K or 1 Meg of secondary cache. Intel is also working on a bugfix for the problem. " Furthermore, the bug seems to be only present in Intel-brand motherboards, (Sabre). Intel has stopped shipping the board, but not the chip.

3 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Intel going the way of Microsoft? by rew · · Score: 3

    Let's hope that processor's microcode does not become field upgradable or Intel will start releasing processors that have bugs (not show-stoppers, but minor flaws)

    Intel IS shipping processors with field upgradable microcode. Since the Pentium Pro, every processor has upgradeable microcode.

    There is an instruction that says: Here is a new microcode for you. The stuff is encrypted. It verifies an unspecified checksum (i.e. Intel only is allowed to give you new microcode), and then loads the new microcode.

    I have a stepping 2 Pentium Pro. I think I could software upgrade it to rev 3 or if it exists 4 or 5....

    Roger.

  2. BSOD? by DdJ · · Score: 3

    I note that the article says that a complete system crash is also called a "blue screen of death".

    Does this bug appear under any OS other than NT? Does anyone else thing this sounds more like a bug in NT than in the chip?

  3. Bad flashback... by technos · · Score: 3

    Geezus. I must have been up WAY too late and drank way too much last night.. My head is foggy.. I sat staring at the 'Bug in Pentium' headline and froze.. For a few minutes, I thought y'all had done a flashback to '94.
    Think there's a correlation between the MS release schedule and Intel's bug schedule? There was the buggy 386-40 back in 88-89 when 3.1 came out, there was the P54D divide bug about when Win 95 was due to be released, and now the Xeon has gone screwy just in time for Win2K. There wasn't a chip failure for Windows 98 because it was nothing more than a relabelled copy of Win95.

    Wintel conspiracy? Or is Intel atempting to undermine MS?

    --
    .sig: Now legally binding!