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AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

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Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#81

Post by 127361 »

nicolaslem wrote: post #21
sylware wrote: post #14

Ofc it is not voiding the warranty, since I would be not surprise it would blow even if people sincerely did not engage in overclocking.

Similar e-fuses are common for preventing downgrading firmware, especially on consoles. Nintendo was famously running out of e-fuses to blow on the Switch because of the many vulnerabilities the console had. Point being that these e-fuses don't blow up randomly by themselves.

That already happened on Xilinx Zynq FPGAs, where an incorrect power supply sequence causes random writes to one of the internal buses, which overwrites various eFuses, even after they have been locked.

https://support.xilinx.com/s/question/0D52E00006hpKdKSAU/zyn...

I understand burning eFuses is necessary during production, but having them blowable when the device is operating normally could be compared to building disposable devices. One logic or software error and the device can be bricked permanently. That is a ridiculous state of affairs. What about single event upsets or some EMI induced glitch causing eFuse corruption?

The power for burning the important fuses should be off at all times during normal operation. And we can have a test pad to supply the VPP during production.

In the case of the AMD processors, a separate bank of fuses can be used to store diagnostic data for warranty returns, if necessary. If those get corrupted somehow, the device won't malfunction. But the important ones should not be possible to program after manufacturing, no matter what happens to the logical state of the hardware, period.

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#83

Post by nosrepa »

BXlnt2EachOther wrote: post #78
ErneX wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remembered the Xbox 360 processor also had eFuses: https://free60.org/Hardware/Fusesets/

Nintendo Switch too IIRC, to guard against users downgrading to a prior firmware with vulnerabilities.

The switch has fuses that blow when you upgrade your firmware to a significant version number. It will check how many fuses are blown to validate what version the fw should be at.

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#84

Post by keep_reading »

DeathArrow wrote: post #36
consp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The days of creating a resistor bridge with a pencil to enable extra cores and altering the multiplier are long gone. I still remember pushing my duron with a massive aluminium block on top of it getting 100+mhz more out of it.

I remember when you could enable cores in a GPU just by flashing a different firmware.

Wasn't there a time when you could flash a GeForce to a Quadro and you'd lose some performance in gaming but you gain floating point precision for rendering? Or was this a rumor?

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#85

Post by Turskarama »

Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #44
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smh this is ridiculous. You literally bought the hardware...

"You will own nothing" and I thought that was about houses, cars, tools, and entertainment media

For you to own _nothing_, it must apply to _everything_.

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#86

Post by paulmd »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #73
woleium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont see the economics of splitting servers for parts. Aside from pulling drives for shredding, servers are mostly sold as pulled on the aftermarket

regardless of the easily quantified economics it's just another sad little papercut on quality of life in general when e.g. my kid can't go out and trivially assemble boxes out of random dumpstered parts, which was how I got into computing in the first place

there is an entire hobby for adults putting together random dumpstered parts/whatever they could scrounge up cheap too, google 'homelab' and thank me later ;)

(I get your point though, I agree, it's very important for kids, especially in a world of increasingly walled gardens. A ton of the poorer world also makes do with whatever - X79 and X99 poverty builds are a real thing even today, because they're still a viable platform and china has cranked out cheap off-brand boards with resoldered chipsets. good workstation/server boards are <$200, and you can get a decent cpu for $50 or so, and memory for $20 a 32GB stick, it still is a relatively high-value thing for the capabilities it offers, if you need more than a normal consumer system.)

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#87

Post by paulmd »

127361 wrote: post #80
paulmd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

however shocking you may find it, typing “epyc cpu” into eBay will nonetheless produce quite a few results. this used to be even bigger in the Xeon days. Being able to drop in a $50 upgrade to x99 and get the 2-3 best chip in socket owns actually. X99 isn't bad if you've got a 18-core chip running at 3.8 ghz all-core (with all-core turbo enhancement), and you can address 256GB of memory in a consumer board with dirt-…

This will ruin the AMD brand, if Intel doesn't do such a thing, then people will start going with Intel instead.

the fact that it probably will not is actually the problem

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#88

Post by woleium »

paulmd wrote: post #69
woleium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont see the economics of splitting servers for parts. Aside from pulling drives for shredding, servers are mostly sold as pulled on the aftermarket

however shocking you may find it, typing “epyc cpu” into eBay will nonetheless produce quite a few results. this used to be even bigger in the Xeon days. Being able to drop in a $50 upgrade to x99 and get the 2-3 best chip in socket owns actually. X99 isn't bad if you've got a 18-core chip running at 3.8 ghz all-core (with all-core turbo enhancement), and you can address 256GB of memory in a consumer board with dirt-…

im fairly sure you will be able to pick up “works with any chip” mobos when the time comes.
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