Intel Describes Itanium 2 Bug

Intel is working with Itanium 2 server vendors on a bug that has surfaced in the McKinley version of its Itanium processor family, an Intel spokesperson said Monday.

The "erratum" is confined to a subset of Intel's McKinley Itanium 2 processors, said Intel's Barbara Grimes. An electrical issue with the processor can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down.

Workaround Available

Customers can work around the problem by lowering the clock speed of their 900-MHz or 1-GHz Itanium 2 processors to 800 MHz, Grimes said. They should contact their system vendor to determine the best course of action. Intel will swap out older McKinley processors for new ones upon request, but the company is not issuing a recall.

In order to crash the system, a particular sequence of operations and events need to happen in step. Intel discovered the problem in lab testing after a system vendor reported it earlier this year, Grimes said.

Still Fixing

Details as to what types of data or configurations cause a system to shut down are unclear. The problem is not related to a particular batch of processors, or any one instruction or data stream, Grimes said.

A field test can determine if a particular McKinley processor is affected by the bug, but problems can occur on systems that test clean in the field, Grimes said. Intel has developed a manufacturing test for processors coming out of its labs that identifies the problem, she added.

McKinley was introduced last July. It solved many of the performance issues that held back adoption of the first Itanium product, Merced.

Several prominent vendors have released systems that use the chip. But analysts say the Itanium systems have still made little headway with customers outside of the high-performance computing market.