Boston, Massachusetts, April 1, 2000;
We all know that Intel has included the rdtsc instruction in their
processors for quite some time now. This is a count of the number
of CPU clocks that have occurred since the processor was started.
The length of the count (a long long) has always been assumed to
be 2^64. Nobody has questioned what the result will be when it
wraps.
Dr. Robert Mandl, a former mathematics professor at MIT, now working as an
independent consultant has found that when the timer wraps, the processor
will no longer recognize any `mov` instructions.
When questioned, an unnamed Intel spokesman stated; "The machine should
be shut down before this event can occur. No known operating system,
except Linux, would allow a CPU to run for such a long time anyway."
Because of this, this newly discovered Intel bug has been named the
"Linux BUG".
Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.3.41 on an i686 machine (800.63 BogoMips).
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