Bugs in Intel Skylake sends the PC crashes
Discovered by GIMPS, the bug of CPU Skylake could crash a PC during loading operations incurred. Intel has already released a fix via BIOS.
Some weeks ago the Great Internet Mersenne Prime mathematical Search (GIMPS) have discovered a bug of Intel Skylake leading to system crash while demanding workflow incurred. Both Windows and Linux or changing the motherboard or RAM modules, the group of mathematicians has managed to consistently reproduce the problem, concluding that actually depended on just the CPU and, in this case, by a bug in the architecture Skylake.
In the case reported by the GIMPS problem occurs within the application Prime95, selecting the Advanced tab and then open the Test window by typing the number 14942209 in the box called Exponent to test. The program starts so to make the calculations more complex, calculations that send inexorably crash any one of the Intel CPUs Skylake. It is a matter of minutes or a few hours.
The problem does not occur on other machines with hardware, including Intel, of other generations that are used systematically by GIMPS to perform the same 24 hours type of 24/7 days a week. Intel has recently confirmed the existence of the problem and has so far been working on a solution that will be distributed soon to the various producers and to be installed by the user via BIOS when available.
” Intel has identified an issue that potentially affects the sixth generation of the Intel Core family of products, ” the company wrote in a statement. ” This problem occurs only under certain conditions of workloads, such as those that may occur during the execution of applications such as Prime95. In these cases, the processor may crash or cause abnormal behavior in the system. ”
Intel ensures that ” has released a fix and is working with third-party partners because that is distributed through the BIOS update. ” It was initially speculated that the crash could be related or similar to the old Pentium FDIV bug in 1994, but finally seems that a simple software updated will correct all or at least circumvent the problem.
