The Phenoms are slowing down

A design flaw could further degrade the performance of K10 processors.

It’s not enough that AMD can’t deliver enough K10 CPUs due to low yields, and due to a recently discovered bug, the ailing manufacturer is forced to endure another blow. In addition, the problem may be more of a problem than previously expected, as a design error affecting the TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer) can cause even more severe data loss. The manufacturer, of course, responded immediately to the widely discovered bug, making the solution available to partners as a microcode update.

In principle, the story should end here, however, according to Tech Report's measurements, the "repair" results in a significant decrease in performance. The updated system was, on average, 13,9 percent slower compared to the "faulty" configuration, but this average also includes such outliers as the paper's staff experienced, for example, in the case of memory transfers and delays.

Seeing the numbers, it is completely understandable for AMD to move indefinitely to ship K10 Barcelona-based server processors. The error will in principle be remedied by a new stepping in the first quarter of 2008, which will presumably be indicated by the manufacturer in the names of the processors.