Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

wbmw, thanks, that supports part of my reply to Elmer:

If an Itanium 2 system runs software that would never use the particular instructions, it does not need to be replaced (though Intel is offering replacements for all CPUs that fail the detection script).

Thus the 'small number' affected refers to a projection of how many chips would run the triggering sequence. The number of processors which exhibit the problem under the test script is an unknown - probably unknown to Intel, too: If they had the script before there processors were released then they would have been caught in test.

I do understand the implication from your post that at least some Itanium2 processors run the script successfully, and do not exhibit the problem.