"Robert Myers" wrote in message
news:LrJBc.68599$2i5.9849@attbi_s52...
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Jeff Butler wrote:

http://www.3dchips.net/content/story.php?id=3927

No information on any BIOS update from my motherboard manufacturer
(ASUS) yet.


Wonder how a BIOS update is going to resolve a problem within the
instruction set? Unless it's a firmware patch that's included in the
BIOS.


One gathers that Opteron has the microcode update feature that allows
the correction of at least some bugs and that Intel has had since 2000.

Redhat Linux boxes automatically update at least Intel microcode at each
boot:

http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/2678

It sounds a good deal safer, actually, than messing with the BIOS.

RM


That's what I was thinking, that it's going to be a microcode patch. Another
less likely possibility is to trap the instruction to software as was once
proposed for the Pentium FDIV bug before Intel decided to recall the chip.

One more piece of information: It's not just Opterons. It's all AMD64 at
revision C0 and higher.