Anybody looking to buy Intel‘s 4th-Gen Xeon Scalable processors may have noticed a recent pause in shipments as the company looked to address a bug that looked to be interrupting system operations.
The mystery error reportedly affected Sapphire Rapids processors with between eight and 32 cores, but the precise reason behind the error remains unclear to this day, despite the resumption of shipments once more.
Intel has since responded with a fix which is available via a firmware update to existing customers. The company did not immediately respond to TechRadar Pro’s request to confirm whether new orders come from the factory with the fix installed.
Intel Sapphire Rapids patch
Intel’s 4th-Gen Xeon Scalable processors were launched earlier this year after several delays and months of holdbacks.
While details of the error remain sparse, The Register reported that the error did not present itself when processors were running commercially available software, indicating that only niche applications were problematic for Sapphire Rapids.
An Intel spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware: “We became aware of an issue on a subset of 4th Generation Intel Xeon Medium Core Count Processors (SPR-MCC) that could interrupt system operation under certain conditions and are actively investigating.”
A company spokesperson said about the patch: “We are now confident the firmware mitigation addresses the issue. We have resumed shipping all versions of SPR-MCC and are working with customers to deploy the firmware as needed.”
A pause in shipments out of an “abundance of caution,” which is believed to have started in mid-June, has now been lifted, and processors are being delivered as normal.
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