Bug In AMD's Quad-Core Barcelona And Phenom May Be More Serious Than Previously Suspected
On Friday, I thought I'd identified the translation-lookaside buffer (TLB) bug which AMD said was responsible for problems it's having with its new Barcelona and Phenom quad-core processors. Now, two readers claim that the bug is more serious than I suggested. The reason is, while there is a BIOS workaround, they claim the fix results in a big performance penalty. (There's also an operating system fix with no performance hit.) This may be why heavy volume shipments don't seem to be in the cards until Q1, when updated silicon, now being readied, is available.
Okay, here's the deal. AMD on Thursday issued a statement where it said: "There has been some talk about an erratum relative to our TLB cache in Barcelona as well a Phenom processor resulting in delays. AMD notified customers of this erratum and released a BIOS fix prior to the Nov. 19th launch that resolves it."
