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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

#31

Post by basementcat »

beacon294 wrote: post #27
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their acquisition of Altera seemed to harm both companies irreparably. Any company can reach a state where the Process people take over, and the Product people end up at other firms. Intel could have grown a pair, and spun the 32 core RISC-V DSP SoC + gpu for mobile... but there is little business incentive to do so. Like any rotting whale, they will be stinking up the place for a long time yet. =)

Could you elaborate on the process people versus product people?

I would argue the fabrication process people at Intel are core to their business. Without the ability to reliably manufacture chips, they're dead in the water.

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

#33

Post by bgmeister »

beacon294 wrote: post #27
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their acquisition of Altera seemed to harm both companies irreparably. Any company can reach a state where the Process people take over, and the Product people end up at other firms. Intel could have grown a pair, and spun the 32 core RISC-V DSP SoC + gpu for mobile... but there is little business incentive to do so. Like any rotting whale, they will be stinking up the place for a long time yet. =)

Could you elaborate on the process people versus product people?

I assume they're referring to Steve Jobs' comments in this (Robert Cringely IIRC) interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE (not a great copy, but should be good enough)

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

#35

Post by scrlk »

loufe wrote: post #5

Intel cannot afford to be anything but outstanding in terms of customer experience right now. They are getting assaulted on all fronts and need to do a lot to improve their image to stay competitive.

Intel should take a page out of HP's book when it came to dealing with a bug in the HP-35 (first pocket scientific calculator):

> The HP-35 had numerical algorithms that exceeded the precision of most mainframe computers at the time. During development, Dave Cochran, who was in charge of the algorithms, tried to use a Burroughs B5500 to validate the results of the HP-35 but instead found too little precision in the former to continue. IBM mainframes also didn't measure up. This forced time-consuming manual comparisons of results to mathematical tables. A few bugs got through this process. For example: 2.02 ln ex resulted in 2 rather than 2.02. When the bug was discovered, HP had already sold 25,000 units which was a huge volume for the company. In a meeting, Dave Packard asked what they were going to do about the units already in the field and someone in the crowd said "Don't tell?" At this Packard's pencil snapped and he said: "Who said that? We're going to tell everyone and offer them, a replacement. It would be better to never make a dime of profit than to have a product out there with a problem". It turns out that less than a quarter of the units were returned. Most people preferred to keep their buggy calculator and the notice from HP offering the replacement.

https://www.hpmuseum.org/hp35.htm

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

#36

Post by basementcat »

fefe23 wrote: post #18

So on one hand they are saying it's voltage (i.e. something external, not their fault, bad mainboard manufacturers!). On the other hand they are saying they will fix it in microcode. How is that even possible? Are they saying that their CPUs are signaling the mainboards to give them too much voltage? Can someone make sense of this? It reminds me of Steve Jobs' You Are Holding It Wrong moment.

My guess is something like the following:

Modern CPU's are incredibly complex machines with a ridiculously large amount of possible configuration states (too large to exhaustively test after manufacture or sim during design), e.g. a vector multiply in flight with an AES encode in flight with x87 sincos, etc. Each operation is going to draw a certain amount of current. It is impractical to guarantee each functional unit with the required current but the supply rails are sized for a "reasonable worst case".

Perhaps an underestimate was mistakenly made somewhere and not caught until recently. Therefore the fix might be to modify the instruction dispatcher (via microcode) to guarantee that certain instruction configurations cannot happen (e.g. let the x87 sincos stall until the vector multiply is done) to reduce pressure on the voltage regulator.

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

#37

Post by dboreham »

pitaj wrote: post #28
fefe23 wrote: post #18

So on one hand they are saying it's voltage (i.e. something external, not their fault, bad mainboard manufacturers!). On the other hand they are saying they will fix it in microcode. How is that even possible? Are they saying that their CPUs are signaling the mainboards to give them too much voltage? Can someone make sense of this? It reminds me of Steve Jobs' You Are Holding It Wrong moment.

> Are they saying that their CPUs are signaling the mainboards to give them too much voltage? Yes that's exactly what they said.

So it's a 737 MAX problem: the software is running a control loop that doesn't have deflection limits. So it tells the stabilizer (or voltage reg in this case) to go hard nose down.

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

#38

Post by abracadaniel »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #29
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they were producing defective CPUs, identified & addressed the issue but didn’t issue a recall, defect notice or public statement relating to the issue? Good to know.

It sounds like their analysis is that the oxidation issue is comfortably below the level of "defective". No product will ever be perfect. You don't need to do a recall for a sufficiently rare problem. And in case anyone skims, I will be extra clear, this is based on the claim that the oxidation is separate from the real problem here.

They could recall the defective batch. All of the cpus with that defect will fail from it. The seem to have been content to hope no one noticed.

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

#39

Post by aseipp »

fefe23 wrote: post #18

So on one hand they are saying it's voltage (i.e. something external, not their fault, bad mainboard manufacturers!). On the other hand they are saying they will fix it in microcode. How is that even possible? Are they saying that their CPUs are signaling the mainboards to give them too much voltage? Can someone make sense of this? It reminds me of Steve Jobs' You Are Holding It Wrong moment.

Saying "elevated voltage causes damage" is not attributing blame to anyone. In the very next sentence, they then attribute the reason for that elevated voltage to their own microcode, and so it is responsible for the damage. I literally do not know how they could be any clearer on that.

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

#40

Post by basementcat »

scrlk wrote: post #35
loufe wrote: post #5

Intel cannot afford to be anything but outstanding in terms of customer experience right now. They are getting assaulted on all fronts and need to do a lot to improve their image to stay competitive.

Intel should take a page out of HP's book when it came to dealing with a bug in the HP-35 (first pocket scientific calculator): > The HP-35 had numerical algorithms that exceeded the precision of most mainframe computers at the time. During development, Dave Cochran, who was in charge of the algorithms, tried to use a Burroughs B5500 to validate the results of the HP-35 but instead found too little precision in the f…

I wonder if Mr. Packard's answer would have been different if a recall would have bankrupted the company or necessitated layoff of a substantial percentage of staff.
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