"Buried deep in a pile of slashdot comments, Matthew Dillon of DragonFly gives a detailed assessment of the Intel Core bugs. While a lot of news sites and bloggers were quick to dismiss the issue as inflated, Dillon's comments provide a much closer look at the actual issues."
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Member since:2005-08-08
> Neither Theo nor Matt have much direct experience in bringing up OSes on processors, and so neither are more qualified judges of hardware errata than anyone here is likely to be.
Theo contributed a lot to the SPARC port of NetBSD/OpenBSD; he is a de-facto spokesman for OpenBSD, so he basically says what the other ~80 developers think (including those who do the very low-level work) .
Matt used to design hardware and operating systems from scratch; he is a VM guru (so he has authority to talk on MMUs); he worked on nearly every part of the DragonFlyBSD kernel, including low-level stuff.
They certainly have way more authority to judge hardware errata than you or I.
Member since:2006-02-15
Theo contributed a lot to the SPARC port of NetBSD/OpenBSD; he is a de-facto spokesman for OpenBSD, so he basically says what the other ~80 developers think (including those who do the very low-level work).
Theo definitely doesn't poll the developers before he opines.
Matt used to design hardware and operating systems from scratch; he is a VM guru (so he has authority to talk on MMUs); he worked on nearly every part of the DragonFlyBSD kernel, including low-level stuff.
He never designed a processor from scratch, nor, as far as I know, has he ever worked on a processor bringup.
They certainly have way more authority to judge hardware errata than you or I.
The whole point of my comments on this thread is that "authority" is meaningless in discussions like this.
I have been involved in the design of processors from scratch, I have done low level bringup on very complex processors, and I have dealt with far worse errata than those that Theo is complaining about. However, I would not want you to take my word for this.
Theo has offered no arguments to support his claims, only claims. Matt has offered arguments, but others have offered counters. You should forget Matt's credentials and compare his arguments to those being offered in rebuttal.
If you understand the field, then you will realize that Matt has overreacted in this instance, and Brandon has done a good job of addressing his concerns.
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Member since:
2006-02-15
Of course what Matthew Dillon and The De Radt says weights more than any comment on osnews
They should not. The arguments should weigh entirely on their merits, independent of who made them.
Never confuse notoriety with knowledge, nor expertise in one aspect of computing with expertise in another.
Neither Theo nor Matt have much direct experience in bringing up OSes on processors, and so neither are more qualified judges of hardware errata than anyone here is likely to be.