Google Uncovers CPU Bug For Geminilake, Affecting At Least Firefox & Chrome

[timofonic]

Sounds more like it's a hard to reproduce bug that depends (amidst other things) on where the linker places stuff.

Hard to blame Google if a cpu can be singled out. Especially if at the same time Mozilla did the "don't care/works for me" instead of investigating.

Typical Mozilla attitude.

Mozilla sucks these days.

Intel is having a he'l of CPU bugs these days. I'm getting nostalgia of the old Pentium days.

[milkylainen]

I think that it's not so much only browser triggering the bug, but only browsers have so large widespread use and (for Chrome) so extensive telemetry info that allows them to actually be notified of crashes and their probable cause.

Most other software won't do that, and people will blame Windows, or the software, or the Gods that didn't smile back at them or something.

This is a prime reason why I strongly believe that telemetry about technical and performance information is a very important thing to have.

Quite likely. But doesn't Windows come with pretty nice bug reports/automatic telemetry that can be amassed into nice data points?

[milkylainen]

That's a juvenile dream.

You know full well that you can't just disable the program for something you can work around in software. This is the real world for like 1000% of actual software development.

Heh. I know. I work around buggy hardware all day long, most of the days.
But sometimes I have "hizzyfits/juvenile dreams" of telling a hardware vendor to "shove it".
There isn't much liability in software or hardware for most use cases.

I think that CPUs can be considered static in their presentation.
And as such, if their bugs affect your usage and cannot be fixed without deteriorating other parameters, vendors should be liable.
Ie, taking it back/compensating/replacing it.

[JonathanM]

They also added special options in the UEFI setup to disable the most likely source of the crashes (some deeper C-states, C6 or something), so that you can still live with an affected system if you can't just call AMD and send over the CPU.

That is a separate issue, though. The issue amd replaced cpus for was the segfault bug (can also be worked around by disabling the opcache) . The c6 lockup bug is still precent in replacement cpus and in zen+ cpus like r5 2400g. On my motherboard both the opcache and c6 (idle current) options were present in early versions, were subsequently removed and recently added again.

[starshipeleven]

Despite preferring AMD CPU, I must recall the "Ryzen bug", which was much more serious. But AMD replaced our CPUs for free.

They also added special options in the UEFI setup to disable the most likely source of the crashes (some deeper C-states, C6 or something), so that you can still live with an affected system if you can't just call AMD and send over the CPU.

[starshipeleven]

I hate fixing code for apparently broken hardware.
If it was up to me I'd write a detection routine instead.

"You have a P.O.S CPU. Go tell Intel to shove it."

That's a juvenile dream.

You know full well that you can't just disable the program for something you can work around in software. This is the real world for like 1000% of actual software development.

[ALRBP]

The real bug is intel itself.

Despite preferring AMD CPU, I must recall the "Ryzen bug", which was much more serious. But AMD replaced our CPUs for free.

[starshipeleven]

Sounds like a pretty severe and basic bug.
I'm surprised it hasn't triggered all sorts of havoc all over the place?
Maybe it isn't a hardware bug after all?
What's so special about the browsers that they keep (apparently?) triggering the bug?

I think that it's not so much only browser triggering the bug, but only browsers have so large widespread use and (for Chrome) so extensive telemetry info that allows them to actually be notified of crashes and their probable cause.

Most other software won't do that, and people will blame Windows, or the software, or the Gods that didn't smile back at them or something.

This is a prime reason why I strongly believe that telemetry about technical and performance information is a very important thing to have.

[milkylainen]

Sounds like a pretty severe and basic bug.
I'm surprised it hasn't triggered all sorts of havoc all over the place?
Maybe it isn't a hardware bug after all?
What's so special about the browsers that they keep (apparently?) triggering the bug?

I hate fixing code for apparently broken hardware.
If it was up to me I'd write a detection routine instead.

"You have a P.O.S CPU. Go tell Intel to shove it."

[andyprough]

Sounds more like it's a hard to reproduce bug that depends (amidst other things) on where the linker places stuff.

Hard to blame Google if a cpu can be singled out. Especially if at the same time Mozilla did the "don't care/works for me" instead of investigating.

I think you are right - when I look further, I see that one Firefox dev said their microcode reporting mechanism may have been giving them incorrect values: "I'm not sure I entirely trust our microcode version reporting code". So, probably Google is correct.