Collected by Robert R. Collins
Dr. Dobb's Journal
Undocumented Corner
Intel
Inside --
The Errata Series
Productivity
Enhancements
and Programming Tricks
Intel
Secrets, Bugs and
Undocumented Opcodes
Intel Data
Sheets and
Programming Manuals
| February 1998 | If
you've ever done any programming in System
Management Mode, especially on the Pentium Pro
processor, then you must read this article. In this article, I disclose a bug in Intel's documentation that might help you save dozens of hours debugging your code. In the worst case, your code might actually appear correct, but could cause system-wide failure; even a processor shutdown. Before wasting any more time writing SMM code, you need to know all of the facts. This article will be the first in a series of articles about Intel's System Management Mode on the Pentium Pro -- and all of the details that Intel never told you. |
| December 1997 | A
few months ago, Intel's world was rocked with the
F00F bug fiasco. When encountered, bug was
capable of locking up an entire network. Any user
who had malicious intentions could write a
program which contained this specific opcode, and
bring down an entire network server. Luckily, a few software workarounds were discovered which would squash this bug. And like usual, there's always a story behind the story. This article has all of the details. |
| August 1997 | Two days before Intel's biggest processor announcement in years, a math bug in the Pentium Pro and Pentium II came to light. Robert takes you inside the Dan-0411 "flag erratum," and tells how the story unfolded. |
| March 1997 | When transitioning between 4MB pages and 4KB pages, it is possible to retain the old page translations in the TLB. This should be considered an anomaly, at best. However, without specific knowledge of this problem, it might come up and hit you when you least expect it. |
| February 1997 | FDIV: the thought of the FDIV bug sends shivers up most peoples spine. In this article, I look into the FDIV bug -- with my own unique perspective. |
| January 1997 | Intel claims that using illegal indices for RDMSR and WRMSR will result in a general protection error (#GP(0)). However, as this article shows, it is possible to access a few MSRs that remain undocumented. Some of the MSRs are actually useful and should be documented by Intel. |