4 ms·

The thing is, almost all hardware accessed through drivers has tons of bugs, at least it's nowhere near as close to "bug-free" as are things like CPUs or DRAMs

by _yosefk 11y ago

The thing is, almost all hardware accessed through drivers has tons of bugs, at least it's nowhere near as close to "bug-free" as are things like CPUs or DRAMs which cannot hide their bugs behind drivers. The thing that one can hope to work reasonably is a piece of hardware plus an accompanying driver which knows to hide that hardware's issues. So another way of putting what you said would be "on Linux there's no working driver for that piece of hardware, unlike on Windows where the 'proprietor' went to the trouble of supplying such a driver."

jjawssd 11y ago
If you think CPUs do not come with a shit-ton of hardware bugs YOU ARE GRAVELY MISTAKEN. Google up the Intel errata for the i7 The list goes on and on.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  I didn't see him thinking that. Just that CPUs do not have as many bugs as other hardware - which I think is quite true. With CPUs a larger portion of bugs are found, and smaller bugs matter because they are not hidden by proprietary drivers.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Heh, i still recall my early encounters with Linux and reading the bootup messages. One of them contained a line related to having found a CPU bug and having put a workaround in place. I am not entirely sure, but i think it may have been the F00F bug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_F00F_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_F00F_bug
  - aidos 11y ago
    Ha. Reminded me of the Pentium Floating Point Bug from the 90s. First (only?) time a CPU bug has been an international press story? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug
- notacoward 11y ago
  FWIW, memory has plenty of bugs too. With respect to the original point, these are usually not visible to drivers (unless you count EDAC) because they're handled at the chipset level. However, for certain kinds of systems - especially embedded - that don't have chipsets these issues can become painfully visible. My own exposure to this was at SiCortex, where the memory logic was directly on the same single die as everything else that comprised a node.

by _yosefk 11y ago

jjawssd 11y ago

If you think CPUs do not come with a shit-ton of hardware bugs YOU ARE GRAVELY MISTAKEN. Google up the Intel errata for the i7 The list goes on and on.

ptaipale 11y ago
I didn't see him thinking that. Just that CPUs do not have as many bugs as other hardware - which I think is quite true. With CPUs a larger portion of bugs are found, and smaller bugs matter because they are not hidden by proprietary drivers.
digi_owl 11y ago
Heh, i still recall my early encounters with Linux and reading the bootup messages. One of them contained a line related to having found a CPU bug and having put a workaround in place. I am not entirely sure, but i think it may have been the F00F bug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_F00F_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_F00F_bug
- aidos 11y ago
  Ha. Reminded me of the Pentium Floating Point Bug from the 90s. First (only?) time a CPU bug has been an international press story? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug
notacoward 11y ago
FWIW, memory has plenty of bugs too. With respect to the original point, these are usually not visible to drivers (unless you count EDAC) because they're handled at the chipset level. However, for certain kinds of systems - especially embedded - that don't have chipsets these issues can become painfully visible. My own exposure to this was at SiCortex, where the memory logic was directly on the same single die as everything else that comprised a node.