Scumbria, re: "Unlike Intel, AMD has never had a major CPU bug blowup in their face. " Apparently you must have missed this.
Advanced Micro Devices confirmed that its K6 processor contained a bug that may cause unreliable system behavior in rare situations. Linley Gwennap, editor of the Microprocessor Report, says the K6 bug is as serious as Intel's flag erratum that was discovered last May.
Here's the URL:
pcworld.com
AMD K6 Sprouts Rare Bug
Another one of those hard-to-find-bugs that only affect programmer types is found in the wild.
by Brian McWilliams, PC World NewsRadio
September 11, 1997, 10:38 a.m. PT
Advanced Micro Devices today confirmed that early shipments of its K6 processor contained a bug that may cause unreliable system behavior in rare situations.
According to AMD spokesman Dean Whitehair, the bug or erratum only affects K6 users who are running the Linux operating system on PCs with more than 32MB of RAM.
Whitehair says a small number of users have reported encountering system errors when trying to compile or update Linux on their K6 machines. The erratum does not impact K6 users on Windows 95 or NT, and Whitehair says it's been fixed in versions of processor that are shipping now.
"There're always going to be errata in any processor. Go visit Intel's errata list, you'll see. And the other thing is we have IBM and Digital using us right now; they have to go through some very extensive tests that are a lot more rigorous than many review labs. So we're pretty confident that we have a robust part."
Linley Gwennap, editor of the Microprocessor Report, says the K6 Linux bug is in the same league as Intel's flag erratum that was discovered last May.
"I would tend to say this was on a similar level; potentially maybe slightly higher in that nobody really found anyone who was affected by the flag erratum, whereas in this case clearly some people are affected. But the number is pretty small and I think that the K6 is certainly safe for the vast majority of computer users."
One user who encountered the K6 bug is Mike Iverson, a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering at Ohio State University. He says he built a PC with a 233-MHz K6 in early August, and while the bug has made running Linux difficult for him, he agrees it shouldn't be of concern to most users.
"You probably could cause some problems in an everyday machine or while doing a more mundane task, but even with the [Linux] compilation it was a very infrequent error. I'd have an extremely large compilation and maybe one out of every ten or fifteen would fail. To my knowledge I haven't experienced failures at any other time."
According to Whitehair, AMD has shipped around 1 million K6 processors since their introduction in April. He says the company stands behind its products and is encouraging K6 users who have problems with their CPUs to contact the company's tech support line for a possible replacement. That number is 408/749-3060.
One user who may be calling that number soon is Sam Tetherow, director of development for a Web site called Nebraska Online. He ran into problems with his K6 processor during a recompile of Linux. It's caused him to stop using the PC for some important tasks, but he says he's not soured on AMD.
"I personally would not have any qualms about buying an AMD product again," he said. "Intel's got the same problems. I've got a P-90 at home that was replaced because it had the infamous division bug. I would just chalk it up to AMD trying to be as competitive as possible. They just pushed it too far and released a CPU that they didn't really test out that much."
"Bugs are more common when the processor has first been released," according to Gwennap of Microprocessor Report. "This is another case where being the first guy on the block to buy a new chip is not
always the best idea. Only the processors that AMD built within the first few months of announcement have this bug."
AMD, by the way, has recently begun posting its processor errata on its Web site. It joins Intel as the only major chip vendor to make bugs public on the Internet.
Herb |
