Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 23:28:48 11/23/98
Go up one level in this thread
On November 23, 1998 at 16:47:05, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>On November 23, 1998 at 15:13:14, Howard Exner wrote:
>
>>On November 23, 1998 at 14:05:34, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On November 23, 1998 at 10:39:54, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>>
>>>>On November 23, 1998 at 06:24:34, Alessandro Damiani wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>There was a post from Bob Hyatt some days ago. He said the AMD k6 has an error.
>>>>>If I remember it right it was wrong branching prediction. I don't know if the
>>>>>error has been eliminated in the k6-2.
>>>>
>>>>If the "error" is branch prediction, that just makes the chip slower, but it'll
>>>>stll do what you want it to...
>>>>
>>>>-Tom
>>>
>>>
>>>No.. this error is a killer. If it happens, the chip locks up and not even
>>>a soft reset will clear it... requires a total power-down. It is similar to
>>>the "foof" bug for intel, but intel found a quick work-around to fix this.
>>>AMD hasn't so far. Been a big topic on the linux-SMP mailing list.
>>
>>Is this bug you are referring the one from over a year ago?
>>
>>This is an article from last year:
>>
>>AMD K6 Sprouts Rare Bug
>>
>>by Brian McWilliams, PC World NewsRadio
>>
>>
>> September 11, 1997
>>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."
>>
>>This article sums up my recollection of the AMD bug, as I followed it
>>on the computer-site newsgroups over a year ago. It was detetected in the early
>>B series of AMD K6 chips.
>>
>>Are Linux users still having problems with the newer K6's (by newer I
>>mean anything from last summer to the present. Not the B series)?
>
>
>Hard to say whether that is "the bug" or not... because it doesn't say a thing
>about what it is doing. The bug I saw, reported again by Alan Cox (the person
>that keeps the 2.0 linux kernel distribution process going) has to do with a
>branch to a very high address that is a multiple of something like 20000000,
>that fails. The code he posted was 3 lines of assembly long, and crashed every
>AMD that it has been run on, to date...
>
>At least that was the story on the linux-SMP mailing list. Several reported
>their machines failed this test, including very recent ones. I don't have an
>AMD here having run into problems last year with one, so I can't test this
>myself...
>
>But the sources are certainly reliable if you know Alan and the other "kernel
>hackers"...
I am currently writting this from an AMD K6-2 300MHz. So far everything is fine.
I hope the bug doesn't affect my computer before I can send this
messa#########################################################
##############################################################
##############################################################
########### Exception 0E encountered at 20000000 ###########
########### EAX=69696969 EBX=69696969 ECX=69696969 ###########
########### EDX=69696969 ESP=69696969 EBP=69696969 ###########
########### EIP=20000000 ESI=69696969 EDI=69696969 ###########
##############################################################
##############################################################
##############################################################
Very slight processor failure reading #^รง@^|{[^.EXE
Abort, Retry, Ignore? _
This page took 0 seconds to execute
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