Hi. Does this mean the actual hardware (cpu) is defective or flawed?
Printable View
Hi. Does this mean the actual hardware (cpu) is defective or flawed?
I take it new batches will be bug free?
The cpu is flawed so you have to fix the cpu but you can't so you have do something to the bios. It still means the cpu is flawed.
I don't think it does. If you buy a product and it does what it's supposed to do then it's not flawed. The BIOS fix isn't a workaround, it really is delivering new (and improvedTM) firmware to the CPU. The BIOS is just the delivery mechanism, and I presume once updated you could take the CPU out and use it in a different system no problem, not sure though.
The BIOS can't upload new hardware, so any "fix" can only involve disabling things (possibly putting a slower equivalent in microcode) or changing timings. So you can expect the "fixed" cpu to be slower. Still call it a fix when it isn't good as new?
That is my understanding. I don't think it is flashed into the cpu, it is loaded into fast SRAM.
You might be actually right after reading this.
So there's reprogrammable non-volatile storage on the CPU die?
You'll probably need to wait for a new stepping to be released, although I cannot remember the last time an etailer listed the stepping.....
Either way, it doesn't really matter. Pretty much every cpu ever released has an errata list, with microcodes updates that fix them.