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Intel iMac Hardware

34 Design Flaws in 20 Days of Intel Core Duo 356

Pray_4_Mojo writes "Geek.com is reporting that Intel's errata (bug) documentation shows that the Intel Core Duo chip has 34 known issues found in the 20 days since the launch of the iMac Core Duo. (you can read the list) with only plans to fix one of them. While bugs in hardware is nothing new (the P4 has 64 known issues, at this time Intel does not plan to fix a single one) this marks one of the first times that Intel released a processor with known bugs, and some of the bugs are of higher severity than in the past. Also alarming is the rate the flaws have been found, at one and half per day since the launch of the iMac Core Duo."
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34 Design Flaws in 20 Days of Intel Core Duo

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  • Re:Faster (Score:5, Funny)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:34PM (#14549003)
    Shh!!! You're ruining perfectly good FUD!
  • by catahoula10 ( 944094 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:36PM (#14549033)
    Why does Apple want to use an intel chip?

    Oh, thats right:
    Microsoft Owns Apple.

    How can we tell?

          1. Apple's stock only rose 25% last week.
          2. Bill Gates's birthday now a paid holiday for Apple employees.
          3. Default Mac startup sound changed to "Taps."
          4. Wall Street brokers have stopped using Apple stock certificates as toilet paper.
          5. Apple's new slogan: "Almost as good as Windows!"
          6. Apple has been bent over with its pants dropped for so long now, even a geek like Bill Gates was bound to get lucky.
          7. Cute rainbow-colored apple now inhabited by cute rainbow-colored worm.
          8. microsoft comes out with an operating system incorporating Mac technology ... uh, wait a minute ...
          9. Phone and utilities mysteriously start working again at Apple's corporate HQ.
        10. Steve Jobs seen tending bar at the Gates' private lawn party.
        11. Diners in Microsoft's staff cafeteria can now enjoy their apple pie purely for its wholesome goodness and no longer as a symbolic act of global domination.
        12. Unsold Newtons used as cobblestones in Gates's driveway.
        13. Apple Employee of the Month gets to hunt loose change at Bill's house.
        14. New Apple employee dress code includes large "Property of B. Gates" tattoo on ass.
        15. Bill Gates still burned in effigy, but upper management no longer attends.

    (http://www.ehumorcentral.com/Directory/Jokes/838. html [ehumorcentral.com])

    I like #7 and #11 myself :-)

  • by frostilicus2 ( 889524 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:39PM (#14549067)
    ...Pobody's nerfect.
  • by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:41PM (#14549090)
    The flaw I'm waiting to see:

    Cannot run Windows XP. Classification: Minor.

  • by catmistake ( 814204 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:50PM (#14549184) Journal
    we will miss the AlteVec Velocity Engine and 64-bit full RISC processing, no doubts. Lets hope Intel designs something as useful as AlteVec developers can take advantage of, and gets Apple a 64-bit chip soon.
  • Re:Faster (Score:5, Funny)

    by adrianmonk ( 890071 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:50PM (#14549192)
    Maybe they're just getting faster/better at finding bugs?

    Yeah, I hear they're 2 to 3 times as fast now on the most important bug finding benchmarks.

  • by Phil John ( 576633 ) <philNO@SPAMwebstarsltd.com> on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:51PM (#14549205)
    Coral Cache of the image [nyud.net]

    Quoth the image: Show stopper, but only observed by Intel so far. Also, any OS developer who codes like this deserves this one.
  • Re:20 days? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:53PM (#14549225)
    I just checked on my P1, and it's really 19.9999999999999999742919319 days, not 20.
  • by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:57PM (#14549262) Homepage Journal
    ... for the first time, they're releasing the chip for a stable OS first.

    It used to be that testers only had an unstable testbed OS (designed primarily to run the same company's office suite) to use for validatation. Testers were never quite sure before where the blue screens, lockups, funny noises, and billowing smoke actually originated.

    (Relax, it's just a joke).
  • by jm91509 ( 161085 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:01PM (#14549295) Homepage
    AE 16:

    Show-stopper but only observed by Intel so far. Also, any OS developer who codes like this deserves this one.
  • by aftk2 ( 556992 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:17PM (#14549454) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, I know - there really isn't that much difference between a 1.8Ghz Core Duo and the 1.8Ghz dual-core G5 in the current Powerbooks.

    Er. Wait a minute. There's no such G5 in a Powerbook? The best we had a single core 1.5Ghz G4? Oh - well perhaps there is a substantive difference in chips, after all.
  • by redcircle ( 796312 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:26PM (#14549581)
    Just leave it in "BETA" google does a good job at that.
  • by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @02:06PM (#14549926)
    Sir, what are you doing? This is Slashdot, where everybody for some reason has a hard-on for AMD and ignores their flaws while pointing out Intel's to further their fanboy agendas. For crying out loud, we almost had a moment of calm, rational reasoning there. It's almost as if you're suggesting that the submitter is blowing things out of proportion, and that is IMPOSSIBLE HERE! Our system is fool-proof. Good day.
  • Re:Faster (Score:2, Funny)

    by hobbit ( 5915 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @02:51PM (#14550337)

    including the one you are using to read this right now.
    Tsh. Like all real geeks, I read Slashdot in Lynx under HURD on a custom ASIC I designed myself.

  • Re:20 days? (Score:2, Funny)

    by SpinJaunt ( 847897 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @03:38PM (#14550762)
    Q: How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
    A: 1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.

    Q: What do you get when you cross a Pentium PC with a research grant?
    A: A mad scientist.

    Q: What's another name for the "Intel Inside" sticker they put on Pentiums?
    A1: Warning label.
    A2: Truth in advertising.

    Q: What do you call a series of FDIV instructions on a Pentium?
    A: Successive approximations.

    Q: Complete the following word analogy: Add is to Subtract as Multiply is to

          1. Divide
          2. ROUND
          3. RANDOM
          4. On a Pentium, all of the above

    A: Number 4.

    Q: What algorithm did Intel use in the Pentium's floating point divider?
    A: "Life is like a box of chocolates." (Source: F. Gump of Intel)

    Q: Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586?
    A: Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got 585.999983605.

    Q: According to Intel, the Pentium conforms to the IEEE standards 754 and 854 for floating point arithmetic. If you fly in aircraft designed using a Pentium, what is the correct pronunciation of "IEEE"?
    A: Aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee!
    TOP TEN NEW INTEL SLOGANS FOR THE PENTIUM

    9.9999973251 - It's a FLAW, Dammit, not a Bug
    8.9999163362 - It's Close Enough, We Say So
    7.9999414610 - Nearly 300 Correct Opcodes
    6.9999831538 - You Don't Need to Know What's Inside
    5.9999835137 - Redefining the PC--and Mathematics As Well
    4.9999999021 - We Fixed It, Really
    3.9998245917 - Division Considered Harmful
    2.9991523619 - Why Do You Think They Call It Floating Point?
    1.9999103517 - We're Looking for a Few Good Flaws
    0.9999999998 - The Errata Inside

  • by groman ( 535485 ) <slashdot@carrietech.com> on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @03:57PM (#14550900) Homepage
    Well this goes along with the new Apple announcement for a compatibility layer that recreates a genuine Mac OS 9 experience on an Intel-powered Mac. ... I'll shut up now.
  • Re:Faster (Score:3, Funny)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @04:27PM (#14551154)
    >>Maybe they're just getting faster/better at finding bugs?

    Right. Its dual core so its twice the bugs found twice as fast. Amazing!
  • Re:Faster (Score:3, Funny)

    by njh ( 24312 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @05:32PM (#14551780) Homepage
    Soon they'll be finding the bugs before they leave the factory!

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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