Rui Carmo
I have been keeping tabs on this since Wendell’s video, and with huge potential for future trouble as CPUs start failing down the line in either laptops or desktops.
Mainstream users are going to be in for a world of hurt, since degradation has the potential to be so slow as to fall outside normal warranty periods (even in the EU).
Fortunately the 12th Gen I got a while back should not be affected (I may have dodged a bullet there, since I could have built a 13th gen configuration), but the impact of this is huge–a microcode update can’t fix the oxidation, only mitigate it and maybe slow down the inexorable degradation of the chip by limiting it.
Just goes to show that there are always risks with manufacturing processes–sure, Intel’s QA is going to need to be reevaluated, but given Intel also fabs things for others, what of any other chips fabbed in the same facilities or using the same process?
No wonder AMD is delaying their new chips due to QA concerns. But this is still great news for their chips, and I think buying AMD this year is a safer bet if you’re building a new server or workstation.