OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/25685/AMD_CPU_bug_confirmed Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 23 May 2013 17:36:09 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509638 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509638 The question is, How do you patch a CPU? Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hiev) Comments RE: ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509640 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509640 BIOS update to try and address the microcode bug? Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (1c3d0g) Comments RE[2]: ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509646 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509646 Since (outside of the people who visit this site) most people never update their BIOS, most operating systems will also load updated microcode.

The updated CPU microcode is volatile and therefore must be patched by either the BIOS or OS every boot. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (voidlogic) Comments RE: ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509649 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509649 That depends, is it a silicon bug (actual hardware) or a microcode bug (base instruction execution code)?
I am no major-processor expert, but I am an EE and normally if a bug is present in hardware (which costs bazillions of dollars to fix) a patch is created in software (firmware, microcode or whatever) to work around it. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 04:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (RDustinB) Comments According to the post http://www.osnews.com/thread?509652 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509652 According to the post, AMD confirmed it is a hardware bug. These I believe have been seen in the past, and the last one I remember (don't quote me on this) was actually fixed by disabling certain instructions so that the bug would not happen. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Poseidon) Comments fix the doco http://www.osnews.com/thread?509657 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509657 maybe they can take advantage of the hardware bug. just document it and it's no longer a problem - all software written to the AMD documentation should work as advertised. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 07:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zhulien) Comments good behavior from their side http://www.osnews.com/thread?509667 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509667 AMD working on fixing the bug instead of covering it up makes me like the company even more. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wanker90210) Comments Comment by Laurence http://www.osnews.com/thread?509681 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509681 That would explain the random seg faults I've been getting on my home server about once every 3 to 6 months.

>. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments A little false modesty there... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509688 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509688 Its not a Joe Shmoe like Bill, Shooter of Bul that found this cpu bug, its Matthew, Father of DragonFly BSD and HammerFS, Dillon.

It would take someone like him, who's stubborn enough and secure enough in his own ability to fork off a major operating system, to find a CPU bug.

Me, I'm excited when I find a bug in my operating system ( if its not windows), database, or programming language and track it down in code. So I imagine he's feeling like that only x 1000 Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bill Shooter of Bul) Comments RE: A little false modesty there... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509701 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509701 Hope it not blown his brain away with ecstasy :/

Kochise Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kochise) Comments RE: A little false modesty there... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509702 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509702 He's also a compiler developer, having written the DICE C compiler in the past, so he knows/understands the inner workings of a CPU, assembler, etc. It's not like John Q. Public, some random OS developer, found the bug. ;) Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoenix) Comments RE: A little false modesty there... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509715 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509715 Baller.

This news story along with your comment made my day. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (earksiinni) Comments RE: A little false modesty there... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509748 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509748 If you get a thrill out of finding bugs in operating systems, Haiku nightly builds should be a constant orgasm for you. Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tidux) Comments RE[2]: A little false modesty there... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509749 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509749 phoenix,

"...so he knows/understands the inner workings of a CPU, assembler, etc. It's not like John Q. Public, some random OS developer, found the bug."

As a random OS developer myself, I feel totally dissed.
At what point did "OS developer" fall to the same level as a "script writer"? No disrespect ;) . What's taken the top spot for prestigious technical occupation? Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alfman) Comments RE[3]: A little false modesty there... http://www.osnews.com/thread?509751 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509751
What's taken the top spot for prestigious technical occupation?

Big hardware companies ;)

All software developers, OS and compiler included, must kneel before whatever crap they come up with. And god, how bad it can get...Edited 2012-03-06 22:43 UTC Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Neolander) Comments Reminds me of when Intel had a similar problem http://www.osnews.com/thread?509766 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509766 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

Hopefully AMD is looking close at what Intel did in this situation. Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (akkad) Comments RE: Reminds me of when Intel had a similar problem http://www.osnews.com/thread?509783 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509783 akkad,

These are more common than you might realize. Having hundreds of "erratum" isn't unusual. For it's part, Amd already has experience with CPU faults, for example, AMD's Phenom processor line once exhibited caching errors and the solution for processors in the field was to disable certain caches.


http://techreport.com/articles.x/13741

Something I didn't know until searching today, is that Linux kernel patches were released to work around the processor bug...so there's another answer to the first poster's question "How do you patch a CPU?". Wed, 07 Mar 2012 03:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alfman) Comments