AMD on Friday sent notices to OEMs and system builders that it is recalling 3,000 Opteron processors that may not work properly under "extreme conditions."
The single-core Opteron x52 and x54 processors in question were produced in late 2005 and early 2006. According to the AMD notice, the company identified a "test escape" that occurred on a limited number of the Opterons.
A "test escape" occurs when a product has passed all outgoing tests applied at the time of manufacture, "but which may produce unexpected results under highly specific and unforeseen conditions," AMD said.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker determined that the processors "may not meet the designated frequency for their clock-speed rating when running floating-point-intensive, noncommercial applications under extreme conditions."
The AMD notice, provided to CRN by an AMD company spokesperson, said the processors were observed to produce inconsistent results upon the convergence of three simultaneous events: the running of floating-point-intensive code sequences with high CPU temperatures and high ambient temperatures.
The problem that emerged in the test environment has not yet been observed in a production environment, according to the notice.
AMD is working with its OEMs and system builders to contact end users who may have acquired one of the processors in question to offer them a free replacement processor.
Andy Kretzer, director of sales and marketing at Bold Data, a Fremont, Calif.-based system builder that uses AMD Opterons, said he is contacting his AMD rep to find out if the problem affects any of his customers.
Manufacturers often put out errata information, said Kretzer. "It's not an uncommon thing," he said. "How many times have you heard from Microsoft about fixes and patches?"
James Huang, product marketing specialist at Fremont-based Amax Information Technologies, which builds custom servers using the Opterons, said his company is already talking to some of its customers to make sure they are aware of the potential problem.
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