Re: News of BSDI Pentium Death Fix?

Rogier Wolff (R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 08:50:51 +0100 (MET)


linux kernel account wrote:
>
> On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
>
> > This just from bugtraq. I've just snarffed the file and will dissasemble
> > soon.
>
> It would supprise the hell out of me if this were an actual fix.. I am
> guessing that they are just populating and locking the cache...
>
> I think it rather rude as hell for intel to work privatly with one
> vendor.. Whats this? Free software isn't allowed to work? Like hell it
> isn't.

Come on, Intel is stressing like hell to get this thing fixed (I
estimate the cost of replacing the defective CPUs at around $5e9), but
they have certain restrictions like "please don't release this yet,
until we're sure it works". So they asked BSDI to "keep the lid on the
source for the fix for another -=*DAY*=- .

BSDI has signed an NDA with Intel, such that Intel has some control
over what gets said in public. Have you signed such an NDA? If Red Hat
would have had such an agreement in place with Intel, then the fix
would have been released for Linux at the same moment, under the same
restrictions.

> At least it's not Microsoft (They prob. didn't care about the bug
> anyways).
>
>
> I dont know about anyone else here, but losing my internal cache is not at
> all in option, the performance is absolutly positivly not an option.

Neither for Intel would this be acceptable. You can disable your cache
from the BIOS.

Roger.

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