Intel Skylake Bug – UEFI BIOS updates required

[Patrick Kennedy]

Although the Intel Skylake generation (or 6th generation Core architecture generation) has been generally well received, we have heard news of a new bug with the chips. The bug manifests itself using some of the higher-end AVX/ FMA3 (Fuse Multiply Add) features in the chip for scientific purposes where the chips will freeze up after some time.

The post Intel Skylake Bug – UEFI BIOS updates required appeared first on ServeTheHome - Server and Workstation Reviews.

Related posts:

1. A look at the updated ASUS UEFI BIOS
2. Intel Skylake – DDR4 RDIMM support
3. Intel Xeon E3-1200 v5 Skylake Memory Details Emerge
4. The Intel Xeon E3-1200 V5 Skylake server launch

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[mstone]

Are they not releasing the fix as a standard microcode update (because vendor bios updates, lol)?

 

[Patriot]

Are they not releasing the fix as a standard microcode update (because vendor bios updates, lol)?

They will... in the UEFI ... but this is just a day one bug.

 

[RobertFontaine]

While the known impact is limited to a hand tweaked version of assembly for fft it is still a pretty significant fault to my way of thinking. An interesting testing challenge. If your C compiler won't generate code that tests the scenario then it gets kind of tough to be hand writing units tests in assembly for a cpu. That is a big space.

I have never read an article on how cpu designs are tested. That would be fascinating.

 

[Patriot]

Well, Maybe the A team can learn something from the B team then...
A team: Nehalem, (memory erratta), SandyBridge vtd, Haswell TSX, Skylake AVX freeze
B Team: Westmere, Ivy Bridge, Broadwell all late but no major day 1 erratas

 

[RobertFontaine]

Tick vs. Tock
A die shrink with no new functionality is different from New functionality delivered.

 

[Patriot]

Tick vs. Tock
A die shrink with no new functionality is different from New functionality delivered.

It has it's own list of challenges... like taping out a new process and getting it to proper yield... and fixing the erratas of the tick... maybe that is why they are always late.