In the early days of personal computing CPU bugs were so rare as to be newsworthy.

[krzysdz@mastodon.online]

@gabrielesvelto Intel's officially stated reason is that (too) high voltage (and temperature) caused fast degradation of clock trees inside cores. This degradation resulted in a duty cycle shift (square wave no longer square?), which caused general instability. If they use both posedge and negedge as triggers, then change in duty cycle will definitely violate timing.

https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Client/Intel-Core-13th-and-14th-Gen-Desktop-Instability-Root-Cause/post/1633239

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@arclight timing degradation should not be visible outside of the highest-spec desktop CPUs which are really pushing the envelope even when they're new. Embedded systems and even mid-range desktop CPUs will never fail because of it. What might become visible is increased power consumption over time though.

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@arclight on the other hand watch out for memory errors. Those can crop up much sooner than CPU problems due to circuit degradation: https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/112407741329145666

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@gabrielesvelto there was also no meaningful computer security nor much need for it in the days of 6502. it's much different when most computers are now connected to the internet and can be infected with malware within seconds of connecting.

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@mdione yes, it's very complex, but motherboard firmware has a mechanism to load the new microcode right as the CPU is bootstrapped. That is even before the CPU is capable of accessing DRAM. All the rest of the UEFI machinery runs after that. Note that this early bootstrap mechanisms usually involves a separate bootstrap CPU, usually an embedded microcontroller whose task is to get the main x86 core up and running.

[x0@dragonscave.space]

@gabrielesvelto I wonder if they could use said statistical toys as part of a large-scale fuzzing process to detect such bugs?

[clanger9@mastodon.online]

Fascinating thread. Do you know if the same issues exist on low power, embedded CPUs like ESP32, or is this something that mostly affects high-end stuff?

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@perpetuum_mobile @gabrielesvelto I used to even code in assembler on 8 bit platforms, for years I could not quite get my head round how modern CPUs worked until this thread (and now I know a bit more)

[bflipp@vmst.io]

@gabrielesvelto

I don’t cut any slack for Intel producing two whole generations of CPUs with manufacturing flaws then trying to cover it up and never really offering full restitution to any customers.

[hyaniner@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@gabrielesvelto It was a very rich, exciting, interesting, and useful post! Thank you very much!

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@vfrmedia @perpetuum_mobile if you have some free time this is a good deep dive: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/classes/fa14/cse240A-a/pdf/04/Gonzalez_Processor_Microarchitecture_2010_Claypool.pdf

While it doesn't cover some of the most recent advancement it captures 90% of what you need to know.

If you have a lot of free time and want to dive deeper there's this: https://www.agner.org/optimize/microarchitecture.pdf

[nicelymanifest@mastodon.social]

@gabrielesvelto The book 'Silicon' by the Italian who designed the 4004, 8080 and Z80 is a most splendid read. Fascinating that he had to add reverse engineering optical confusions to minimise cloning by rivals.

[perpetuum_mobile@mastodon.social]

@vfrmedia @gabrielesvelto I did code a little bit in x86 asm when I was a teen. It was the only way to turn on SVGA modes in Turbo Pascal and I wanted to make game back then ;-) I did a prpgram which simulated a flame in real time, doing per pixel average of surrounding pixels and adding random 255 sparks on the bottom to make the flame look real