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July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

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Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#201

Post by burnte »

yencabulator wrote: post #190
burnte wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microcode changes don't have to affect performance negatively. Do you have any evidence this one will? If it's a voltage algorithm failure, then I would expect that they could run it as advertised with corrected microcode. Unstable power is a massive issue for electronics like this and I have no problem believing their explanation. Bad power causes all sorts of weird issues.

If it was a microcode bug to begin with, fixing the bug wouldn't need to degrade performance. If it was e.g. a bad sensor, that you can "correct" well enough by postprocessing, it doesn't need to degrade performance. But if it's essentially incorrect binning -- the hardware can't function as they thought it would, use microcode to limit e.g. voltage to the range where it works right -- then that will degrade performa…

> If it was a microcode bug to begin with, fixing the bug wouldn't need to degrade performance.

This is both a completely untrue statement, and a judgement on a fix that hasn't been released yet.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#202

Post by starspangled »

sqeaky wrote: post #177
starspangled wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All modern CPUs come out of the factory with many many bugs. The errata you see published are only the ones that they find after shipping (if you're lucky, they might not even publish all errata). Many bugs are fixed in testing and qualification before shipping. That's how CPU design goes. The way that is done is by pushing as much to firmware as possible, adding chicken switches and fallback paths, and all sorts of…

> As you see it's very hard from the outside to know if something can be reasonably fixed by microcode or to call it a "microcode issue They claimed: > a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.

I was responding in context of OP's theory that their statement may not be entirely truthful.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#203

Post by Joel_Mckay »

beacon294 wrote: post #195
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an old theory that accurately points out Marketing/Sales division people inevitably out-compete product innovation people in a successful firm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_exclusion_principl... And yes, the Steve Jobs interview does document how this almost destroyed Apples core business. =)

Just to clarify do you mean employees marketing and selling their innovation skills or people literally in marketing and sales?

Shameless self-promotion is usually not a problem in most commercial settings. Sad, but true... lol =)

Letting Marketing/Finance people set technological product trajectories sooner or later becomes detrimental to large firms.

i.e. the product line becomes disconnected from the consumers actual experience of utility, novelty, and perceived scarcity. =)

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#204

Post by starspangled »

ChoGGi wrote: post #157
starspangled wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All modern CPUs come out of the factory with many many bugs. The errata you see published are only the ones that they find after shipping (if you're lucky, they might not even publish all errata). Many bugs are fixed in testing and qualification before shipping. That's how CPU design goes. The way that is done is by pushing as much to firmware as possible, adding chicken switches and fallback paths, and all sorts of…

I agree with most of what you said, so cherry picking one thingy to reply to isn't my intention, but "And some bugs just take a while to find and fix." I think it's less that it took awhile to find the bug/etc, more so that they've been pretty much radio silent for six months. AMD had the issue with burning 7 series CPUs, they were quick to at least put out a statement that they'll make customers whole again.

Well as it comes to Intel executive management and PR, I'm entirely unqualified to make any educated comment or speculation about it. I can't say I'm aware of Intel ever having great renown for its handling of product defects though.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#205

Post by phire »

starspangled wrote: post #202
sqeaky wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As you see it's very hard from the outside to know if something can be reasonably fixed by microcode or to call it a "microcode issue They claimed: > a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.

I was responding in context of OP's theory that their statement may not be entirely truthful.

The thing is, "incorrect" implies the existence of a static "correct". Which I interpret as a static spec which a microcode bug violated and could be fixed back to that static spec with a simple microcode update.

I do find your suggested scenario to be very plausible. That Intel have discovered their original voltage algorithm was flawed, leading to instability. And it is very feasible that simply updating the microcode is the correct fix for such an issue.

If Intel had explicitly stated that the original voltage algorithm spec was wrong, and the new one fixes the issue, I'd be pretty willing to believe them, and probably wouldn't have written that comment.

I'm not saying your integration of "incorrect voltage" as meaning "voltage that we now know causes instability" is wrong. It's an ambiguous statement and either interpretation is valid. But I have experience working with PR people, they know how to avoid ambiguous statements.

PR people are also experts at using ambiguous statements to their advantage. Crafting statements where not only are there multiple possible interoperation, but statements where the average reader will tend to interpret in the best possible way. I have experience in helping PR people to craft such statements. There are a few other examples of "ambitious statements" in that statement, which leads me to question the honesty of the whole thing.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#206

Post by sirn »

paulmd wrote: post #192
paulmd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alderon are the people claiming 100% of units fail which doesn’t seem supported by anyone else either. Wendell and GN seem to have scoped the issue to around 10-25% across multiple different sources. Like they are the most extreme claimants at this point. Are they really credible?

Ok, I take it back, this looks pretty indicative of a low-load problem and evidently failure rates are much higher in that scenario. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYfBxmBfq7k

I haven't watched the video in its entirely, but it does feel like single core boost might be the main culprit in this scenario. That actually makes a lot of sense why game servers are the one that's affected the most. Though that makes me wonder about HX CPUs failing, since these SKUs doesn't have TVB, but given Wendell's 10-25% failure rate on all-core load, it does seem like Intel may actually have multiple issues with RPL here. Things definitely doesn't look good.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#207

Post by [deleted] »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #124
fomine3 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More E-core is reasonable for multi threaded application performance. It's efficient for power and die area as the name indicates, so they can implement more E-cores than P-cores for the same power/area budget. It's not suitable for who need many single threaded performance cores like VM server, but I don't know is there any major consumer usage requires such performance.

> but I don't know is there any major consumer usage requires such performance. Gaming. There are some games that will benefit from greater single-core performance.

[deleted]

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#208

Post by ChoGGi »

starspangled wrote: post #204
ChoGGi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of what you said, so cherry picking one thingy to reply to isn't my intention, but "And some bugs just take a while to find and fix." I think it's less that it took awhile to find the bug/etc, more so that they've been pretty much radio silent for six months. AMD had the issue with burning 7 series CPUs, they were quick to at least put out a statement that they'll make customers whole again.

Well as it comes to Intel executive management and PR, I'm entirely unqualified to make any educated comment or speculation about it. I can't say I'm aware of Intel ever having great renown for its handling of product defects though.

Oh, I'm certainly the same, just some rando enjoying my popcorn.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#209

Post by account42 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #194
nequo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's a spec of dust on the die, a feature gets turned off and the chip is sold for a lower price. Do you mean that if a 13900KS CPU has a manufacturing defect, it gets downgraded and sold as 13900F or something else according to the nature of the defect?

Yes. It’s called the silicon lottery.

Silicon lottery was when you as a customer could get dies of varying degrees, some of which could be clocked higher than others. For the manufacturer it's not a lottery at all because the scales make the yields for various bins mostly predictable. Binning also means that you as a customer are much less likely to get a chip that is significantly better than specced although it still happens when chips sold as a lower bin for market segmentation purposes.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#210

Post by account42 »

chmod775 wrote: post #135
kevingadd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that running at too high of a voltage for sustained periods can cause physical degradation of the chip in some cases. Hopefully not here!

> can cause physical degradation of the chip in some cases. Not in some cases. Chips always physically degrade regardless of voltage. Higher voltages will make it happen faster.

Yes, but usually this happens slowly enough that the chip will be long obsolete before the degredation becomes an issue.
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