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With the recent release of a microcode reliability update on Microsoft’s site that addresses a handful of Intel Core 2 processors, concern over the pervasiveness of bugs in some of the company’s latest processors is growing, especially now that OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt released his own rundown of outstanding, fixed, and what he deems as “non-fixable bugs.”

In a post published to the Real World Technologies Web site, however, fellow developer Linus Torvalds said the bugs were of no consequence.

Details are still lacking about what, precisely, the June 22 patch fixesnot to mention how severe the actual bugs werebut in de Raadt’s own words, some of the Intel’s latest processors “are buggy as hell.”

Additionally, “ some of these bugs don’t just cause development/debugging problems,” according to a de Raadt posting on a mailing list, “but will *ASSUREDLY* be exploitable from userland code.”

If true, that could spell trouble for Intel on multiple fronts. As de Raadt notes, some of the errors found on Intel’s latest errata (or error) list cannot be fixed via the standard microcode updates the chipmaker usually releases.

According to de Raadt, there are 20 to 30 of such bugs in Intel’s latest errata list that cannot be worked around by operating systems and will be potentially exploitable.

However, Linux founder Linus Torvalds posted a message on the RWT Web site noting the bugs were “totally insignificant”.

“The biggest problem is that Intel should just have

documented the TLB behavior better,” Torvalds wrote. “The Core 2 changes are kind of gray area, and the old documentation simply

didn’t talk about the higher-level page table structures

and the caching rules for them.

“So that part is just a good clarification, and while it

could be called a “bug” just because older CPU’s didn’t

do that caching, I don’t think it’s an errata per se,” Torvalds added. “Of course, if you depended on it not happening (and a

lot of people did), it’s painful. But it really does make

the architecture definition better and clearer.”

As far as Intel is concerned, the company would not comment on whether it agreed with de Raadt’s assessment or not  or whether there were any imminent plans to recall or respin the chips to solve such bugs.

It did, however, seem to downplay the importance and alleged severity of such bugs in its Core 2 processors.

“Months ago, we addressed a processor issue by providing a BIOS update for our customers that in no way affects system performance,” said Nick Knupffer, an Intel spokesman, in an e-mail.

“We publicly documented this as an erratum in April,” he continued. “All processors from all companies have errata, and Intel has a well-known errata communication process to inform our customers and the public. Keep in mind the probability of encountering this issue is low.”

Knupffer went to say that Intel investigates all errata for issues and vulnerabilities and, if found, the company issues fix, usually through a microcode update.

In his post, de Raadt said that “Intel understates the impact of these erraata [sic] very significantly. Almost all operating systems will run into these bugs.”

The latest round of patches address the Intel dual-core “MCW” and quad-core “KC” architecture, and Intel released urgent BIOS and microcode versions for its line up on June 11. The affected CPUs included the Core 2 Duo E4000/E6000, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Xtreme QX6800, QX6700 and QX6800, according to Intel’s errata (or error) list.

Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to add the correct date of Intel’s recent BIOS updates. It has also been updated to add an additional quote from de Raadt on Intel’s response to the errata, and subsequently updated on June 29 to add comments by Linus Torvalds.