Intel released critical microcode patch for all i7 980x,Xeon 36../56.. systems

[JumpingJack]

QFT

i remember AMD posting a $100,000 reward for anyone who could replicate the TLB problem in the real world

but hey, at least intel is on the ball and issuing a fix

I have always held a completely neutral position here -- both Intel and AMD are really good on being on the ball, frankly. All processors have errata, most of them are discovered in the last stages of testing, many (a significant portion) appear after the fact.

The point is, both AMD and Intel subject new products to huge amounts of testing spanning most usage cases and almost all of the known commercial software and OSes, these errata are almost always benign or very rare occurence, many don't even get fixed, of those that don't the probability of triggering one is next to nothing.

The only real errata I can recall that caused significant damage, not necessarily to the compute world but more to reputation was the FDIV bug. That was nasty and Intel did not handle it well at all, they learned their lesson there no doubt.