Illegal Instruction Erratum (Intel's position) (fwd)

[jayrich () ROOM101 SYSC COM (Jay M. Richmond)]

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The following was posted by support () mailbox intel com (Joe Goldmeer) on
comp.sys.intel.  It may be of interest to you.

------------------ Start of forwarded message ----------------------

Hi,

On Friday afternoon (11/7/97) we discovered a number of postings in
newsgroups talking about a potential processor "bug." Working all
weekend, we have confirmed a new erratum on Pentium(R) processor and
the Pentium(R) processor with MMX(TM) technology and have been
aggressively pursing this issue in a very accelerated manner.

If a user with access rights to the operating environment and
execution rights on the processor itself intentionally issues a
specific illegal instruction in native machine language to the
processor, the invalid instruction is not flagged and the system stops
immediately.

It is important to note that this erratum will only occur when someone
has intentionally created this invalid instruction because they want
to crash the system.

The expected behavior is that the processor should return an
"exception flag" to the operating system telling it that an illegal
instruction was issued. This does not occur and the user system hangs;
all the user needs to do is reboot to return to normal operation.

There are a number of ways of dealing with errata. These include
advising software authors of applicable programming techniques,
implementing operating systems patches, and hardware modifications.

We have been aggressive in investigating and characterizing this issue
since Friday 11/7. We are following our normal(albeit accelerated)
process and have begun the process of working with key industry
software and hardware providers to determine the best workaround for
this issue. We expect to have an update on the status of the
workarounds within the next week.

Intel has created a web page dedicated to this issue available to the
public. It can be found at:
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/pentium/ppiie/index.htm

Joe Goldmeer
Intel Internet Support

----------------- End of forwarded message -------------------------


Regards,                       Phone:  (250)387-8437
Cy Schubert                      Fax:  (250)387-5766
UNIX Support                   OV/VM:  BCSC02(CSCHUBER)
ITSD                          BITNET:  CSCHUBER@BCSC02.BITNET
Government of BC            Internet:  cschuber () uumail gov bc ca
                                       Cy.Schubert () gems8 gov bc ca

                "Quit spooling around, JES do it."

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