Sandy Bridge-E should hit C2 stepping after launch

[lutjens]

Every CPU (including production units that you have inside) has tens of various bugs. Some of them are considered serious enough that they need a fix for production level and some not. Some errata can be fixed using a microcode update, some using a BIOS or driver workaround and some require a new stepping. For example there are lots of errata in production units that have been considered not to occur in real world (only under specific conditions / synthetic testing), there are also lots of specification violations considered not serious enough (we can live with that)... there are also public (found in specification updates) and secret errata..

Thanks for the information and insight...very good to know. I imagine that each bug when found, its impact is very closely examined before being allowed to continue to exist in production chips. More than likely quite a few high ups would be needed to sign off on the depriorization of a bug, especially in a Xeon. Would this be accurate?