From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261951AbTJAFr7 (ORCPT ); Wed, 1 Oct 2003 01:47:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261955AbTJAFr7 (ORCPT ); Wed, 1 Oct 2003 01:47:59 -0400 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:60132 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261951AbTJAFr5 (ORCPT ); Wed, 1 Oct 2003 01:47:57 -0400 Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 22:48:53 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Jamie Lokier Cc: jun.nakajima@intel.com, davej@redhat.com, torvalds@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, richard.brunner@amd.com Subject: Re: [PATCH] Mutilated form of Andi Kleen's AMD prefetch errata patch Message-Id: <20030930224853.15073447.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <20031001053833.GB1131@mail.shareable.org> References: <7F740D512C7C1046AB53446D3720017304AFCF@scsmsx402.sc.intel.com> <20031001053833.GB1131@mail.shareable.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.4 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Jamie Lokier wrote: > > Nakajima, Jun wrote: > > Yes. It would kind to tell the pilot about the errata of the engine (and > > refuse to start), rather than telling him that the engine might break > > down anytime after the takeoff. > > Doesn't refusing to boot seem to heavy handed for this bug? The buggy > CPUs have been around for many years (it is practically the entire AMD > line for the last 4 years or so), and nobody in userspace has > complained about the 2.4 behaviour so far. (Linux 2.4 behaviour is, > of course, to ignore the errata). That is the case at present. But the 2.6 kernel was hitting this erracularity daily. If some smart cookie decides to add prefetches to some STL implementation or something, they are likely to start hitting it with the same frequency.