Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[pgerassi]

Elmer:

I saw a Conroe crash in front of me and it corrupted the disk during that crash. You may fluff that off, but to me that is very serious. But to give the benefit of the doubt, I will allowed it another chance. It crashes like that again, and it will be deemed unfit for any further server use. It wil go into the recycling bin.

Data corruption is extremely serious. Any CPU suspected of that would never be allowed in the server room. Most shops have a zero tolerance policy on data corruption. And errata 298 is not a data corruption bug like Conroe errata 124. That errata exists in Wolfdale and all 45nm Intel CPUs.

BTW Validation never really ends. Any time the servers crash, the problem is tracked down. If it is traced to the CPU. immediate replacement is called for (bad single CPU). If it crashes again for that cause, that CPU family is invalidated. When the family is fixed, validation is gone through completely again. One mission critial or two normal server untraceable crash(es) will invalidate the whole server line. Intermittent bugs are hard to trace and sometimes impossible to. That is why untraceable bugs are so feared. IT people hate crapshoots.

Pete