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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
In 2015, Microsoft senior engineer Dan Luu forecast a bountiful harvest of chip bugs in the years ahead.
"We've seen at least two serious bugs in Intel CPUs in the last quarter, and it's almost certain there are more bugs lurking," he wrote. "There was a time when a CPU family might only have one bug per year, with serious bugs happening once every few years, or even once a decade, but we've moved past that."
Thanks to growing chip complexity, compounded by hardware virtualization, and reduced design validation efforts, Luu argued, the incidence of hardware problems could be expected to increase.
This month's Meltdown and Spectre security flaws that affect chip designs from AMD, Arm, and Intel to varying degrees support that claim. But there are many other examples.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:43PM (2 children)
Intel is taking a lot of heat lately, but all the first-run Ryzen processors from AMD have a bug that causes random segfaults, especially when compiling under linux (a not uncommon occurrence if one likes to linux).
Here is an actual tech support letter I received from AMD. Some identifying information has been changed or obscured, otherwise it's 100% as I received it.
That's right, their answer was basically "pics or it didn't happen." I am working to comply with their request. Also, they sent me this before linux 4.15 was released, wanting to know what temperature was reported--and 4.15 is the first kernel version to feature Ryzen CPU temperature reporting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:56AM (1 child)
The way I read their answer is: "we need accurate information to be able to figure out what the problem is". Which makes perfect sense. Many people are highly inaccurate when giving descriptions of things that went wrong (which is perfectly normal and nothing to blame them for), and in complex systems that can easily mean the problem solver keeps looking in the wrong places and won't come near pinpointing and solving the problem. You need to help the problem solver to help you by being accurate, and this problem solver is helping you to be accurate by asking for pictures. Just work together for the best result.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:45PM
There is a known CPU bug [amd.com] which manifests especially when compiling with gcc, and a simple test [github.com] for it, which I sent them the output of.
Besides which my processor batch is known to have the bug, and I sent them that as well.
There is not an issue in this particular instance with "well, things are complicated, and we need to be real accurate."
I have a first-run CPU with a bug. AMD will replace them, but only if you complete their endurance course (instead of replacing them because they are defective and proven so).
The temperature output they ask for might have relevant, but did not even exist when they asked for it--no available driver.
The CPU does not have a bug because of the placement of internal components, because of what other hardware it's paired with, or the phase of the moon.
It left the factory with that bug, I paid $500 for that buggy CPU, and here it is in my computer.
There isn't much difference here between "Well, we need to carefully weigh all the factors" and "pics or it didn't happen."
I am out $500 for a buggy CPU. I want a new one. Give me it. That is all the accuracy needed here.
Meantime thank God this machine does not run Gentoo.