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News Intel confirms Skylake crash erratum

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 11 Jan 2016.

  1. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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  2. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    I wonder if their microcode fix will also slam the door on non-K overclocking...
     
  3. Phil Rhodes

    Phil Rhodes Hypernobber

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    The only surprise is that this isn't more common. These things are complicated, and I'm sure that it's the ability to tweak the microcode (and a lot of attention to detail by clever people) that means we don't see these issues far more.
     
  4. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    I wonder if their "fix" is going to fix or just disable something.
     
  5. Flibblebot

    Flibblebot Smile with me

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    My Pentium says that figure should be $474.668m :p :D

    Sounds like a pretty esoteric bug if it's only showing up with extreme software like Prime95. Otherwise we'd have been none the wiser. As Phil says above, we probably don't know half the microcode fixes that are out there.
     
  6. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    If you're curious, you can read all the errata in Intel's regular Specification Update publications. Here's the Skylake update from September last year (PDF warning), which lists 53 errata - all of which had no fix when the document was published.
     
  7. Alecto

    Alecto Minimodder

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    My thoughts exactly.
     
  8. Elledan

    Elledan What's a Dremel?

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    Having just upgraded to a Skylake system, and having a 'bleeding edge' system for the first time in my life, I find that this edge is kinda... sharp and sticky with what appears to be blood :eeek:

    As long as issues like these are getting fixed ASAP it's okay, I guess. There's a price one has to pay for using what basically amounts to hardware that's not been field-tested, though...
     
  9. azrael-

    azrael- I'm special...

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    Actually, the FDIV bug was one of the primary motivators for Intel to support updatable microcode in its processors.
     
  10. DC74

    DC74 Doh!

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    I have to agree with the comment wholeheartedly, having upgraded to a Skylake system myself a month ago and the only problem I've had so far is a badly coded driver from Logitech (Game panel Software) which seems to relate to the new Z170 chipset, though I can't help but wonder...

    Perhaps intel should spend some more time doing intensive testing with the software available to see what happens rather than being governed by release dates for their CPU's. The giveaway is in the name "Quality Control Testing" they should have picked this up and fixed it before release.
     
  11. Elledan

    Elledan What's a Dremel?

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    It does make one wonder whether Intel shouldn't make standard stability testing tools like the one in the article part of the testing suite. Or rather, why the heck it isn't already.

    So far I had to flash the BIOS of my Asus mainboard to get some memory stability, then I had to replace the mounting of the CPU's HSF because it could bend the CPU's substrate. Now I'll have to flash the BIOS again to prevent hard lock-ups like this. I do hope this is the last issue, because it's getting somewhat silly.
     

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