Hardware Errata

If you write assembly language programming or write a compiler, you might consider reading the errata sheet for your processor.


All processors have errata (Should I move this to ShootTheMessenger ?)

My view: Any silicon these days without errata is most likely not properly documented, tested, or has less than 10 gates in it. I don't care what revision it is. It is amazing how many people who should know better equate silicon errata to "faulty/unusable/unmarketable" product.

If you are of a mind to sell your own product here, do so on your on products merits, not on FUD generated on competitors. If you want to post benchmarks, be prepared to back them up with a publicly available white paper.

-- Alan Deikman 1995-12-04 in his role as moderator of the pci-sig mailing list

"There is always some errata," Waldrop said. "All processors and chipsets have errata."
-- Tom Waldrop, an Intel spokesman quoted at Jun. 25, 1998 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,13266,00.html


(from TestsCantProveTheAbsenceOfBugs)

a story by EricUlevik (don't trust the details):

Doing forex trading, we found a case where our software would get a bad calculation. Once a week or so. Eventually, the problem turned out to be a failure in a CPU cache line refresh. This was a hardware design fault in the PC.

The test suite included running for two weeks at maximum update rate without error, so this bug was found.

If you need this level of quality, a good place to look is Intel's web site for processor errata.


Intel motherboard errata

http://x86.ddj.com/intel.doc/intelmotherboards.htm


Intel processor errata

"Intel Pentium M Processor Has Just 14 Errata. Less Than Found in Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium 4" article by Anton Shilov 04/07/2003 http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20030407062442.html

Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP) errata (applies to Intel® Pentium® and Intel® Itanium®) http://www.intel.com/support/performancetools/libraries/ipp/ia/errata30.htm

Intel Errata Collected by Robert R. Collins ... Pentium Pro ... http://www.x86.org/errata/errataseries.htm


AMD processor errata

URL ?


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