Report: Some embedded Atom CPUs can brick their host systems
If we had to guess at the most-feared word in the CPU industry, "erratum" would be a top contender. When a major silicon bug makes itself known, like the Pentium FDIV bug and the AMD Phenom TLB problems of years past, the costs can be enormous. These bugs only cause problems bad enough to make their way into the public eye once in a blue moon, but today's is a doozy. The Register reports that a circuit degradation problem inside some Intel Atom C2000 embedded CPUs can render systems with those chips inside permanently unable to boot.
El Reg says that neither Intel nor any of the companies whose products are apparently affected by the issue would actually confirm or deny that C2000 Atom CPUs are the point of failure, but Synology apparently tipped Intel's hand when it issued a statement to the site regarding some of ...