Nehalem also has a TLB bug

[rangers]

We were told that Intel's Nehalem, the CPU that we know as Core i7 has TLB. TLB, three letters that have destroyed the sales of Phenom and Opterons based on 65nm K10 cores, stands for Translation Lookaside Buffer, and Intel officialy states in its Intel Core i7 Processor, Extreme Edition Series and Intel Core i7 Processor - Specification Update PDF, that the CPU has a TLB bug.

If you open Intel’s official document that is nicely stored here, on page 37 AAJ1 Clarification of TRANSLATION LOOKASIDE BUFFERS (TLBS) Invalidation part, you will see that Intel says that in some rare cases improper TLB invalidation may result in unpredictable system behavior and can hang your OS or result with incorrect data. Here is the word to word quote: "In rare instances, improper TLB invalidation may result in unpredictable system behavior, such as system hangs or incorrect data. Developers of operating systems should take this documentation into account when designing TLB invalidation algorithms. For the processors affected, Intel has provided a recommended update to system and BIOS vendors to incorporate into their BIOS to resolve this issue."

We are not sure if you should be concerned, but such a thing completely destroyed K10’s reputation and we will certainly do a bit more investigating about it, and ask Intel for a comment. We would like to thank one of our readers for the tip.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10707&Itemid=1

 

[rangers]

some one already posted this, sorry

 

[alvine]

lol one more reason to stick with my q6600@3.4ghz and wait

 

[rochin]

Read the article, intel released a fix for it and all you have to do is a Bios update. Not a big deal.

 

[dattimr]

Read the article, intel released a fix for it and all you have to do is a Bios update. Not a big deal.

Not exactly. It *can* be a big deal if it affects performance. Remember that Phenoms take a 5-15% performance hit with their fix enabled (sometimes quite a bit more). It would make Nehalem pretty much useless compared to current Core 2 offerings if that's the case.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Where this worries me the most is with the bios updates. Assuming this is very hard to make happen for a normal person I'd much rather not take the performance hit.... but what if I need to update my bios down the road for another reason? Is the fix going to be bundled into any new bios I download? Hopefully they'd be smart enough to add a bios option to turn the fix off.

 

[Kari]

^^eh your useless, look at those nicks P

 

[Kari]

cant edit, that was meant of course at zipzoom...

 

[smithereen]

Wow, talk about poetic justice.

 

[perez8434]

zip stop being so hostile he obviously said I'm sorry. means he made a mistake. Put it behind you. Is it that hard. OK i hope not. Thank you.

 

[the last resort]

Great idea!!

 

[Guest]

this thread went down the drain quickly

back on topic... Doesn't really matter if its common or not, the issue is if the fix for it will hinder performance at all

 

[rangers]

it will put the server market off, where customers demand reliability

 

[spathotan]

Your useless. I'm sure you have never posted something that someone else already knew huh?
Thanks for posting rangers.

Says the guy that just joined 2 days ago? Stop being a troll and stop posting, go back to lurking which im sure youll tell me youve been doing here for ages since I called you out on your join date. Either that, or you really are clueless.

On to stuff that actually matters, this "could" hurt some benchmark numbers if the alleged fix does the same thing as it did for Phenoms. But...unlikely probably.

 

[Kari]

I have a pilots license and built my own kit plane. Anything other comments from the peanut gallery?

eh? I have masters in science and I like offshore fishing. You did notice that rangers is the OP and also the second post was from him as well??

 

[perez8434]

I think or believe the fix was already done before the release. They actually already fixed it so whatever performance your getting now will stay.. Also you will never know if it did decrease performance and there is no way of knowing but just take it as this is the i7 performance rather than performance due to a mistake. This TLB bug is not errata just to clarify. But is nothing one should worry about now. If your doubtful then wait. Its always good to wait a while for new technology.

 

[chookman]

Agreed Perez, i think people also forget that it was "just" the TLB problem with the Phenoms that hurt them, it was the fact that they werent up to the current intel quads.

The negative article is more than likely some AMD fanboi's comeback to try and sink the ship of a great processor...

I cant wait until AMD bring another great CPU to market

 

[Kari]

check this other 'i7 tlb' thread as well
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/255644-10-tomshardware

theres a link to an intel document mentioning the problem...

 

[Ryun]

More than likely this isn't what it seems.

Read: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15979

 

[roofus]

this bug existed in the core 2 architecture as well. obviously it isn't as impacting as the Phenom bug.

 

[blackpanther26]

good thing I waited and will now wait for deneb to see if it is bug free.

 

[perez8434]

Nothing will ever be bug free. Believe me when i say I've studied programming and that's one of the things I've learned. So what we try to do is minimize the amount of bugs and make sure the ones that are present are not a big threat. With time more bugs appear and that why patches exist.

 

[darkguset]

"We were told that Intel's Nehalem, the CPU that we know as Core i7 has TLB."

LOL! Really!?? A modern CPU with onboard cache has a TLB???? Amazing! Unless they meant to say that it has a TLBB=Translation Lookaside Buffer Bug

 

[perez8434]

^
Got it!

 

[cjl]

SPEC CLARIFICATION AAJ1 was initially added due to an issue on the Intel® Core 2 Duo processor which was previously corrected with a BIOS update; this issue does not impact the Nehalem Family of CPUs. There are errata on the Intel® Core i7 processor that relate to the TLB. These all relate to improper translations or error reporting, and all of those that impact functionality have been fixed via BIOS updates prior to Core i7 launch.

(from Intel)

I'm not exactly worried.