🚀 go-pugleaf

(Jeff Prothero) writes:

| Is this SOP in the industry?  Do Motorola, AMD, NS ...  follow the
| same policy?

These are my observations from the inside of AMD, not official
company policy.

I was the "keeper of the bug list" for the Am29000 a couple of years
ago.  The list contained both a detailed internal description
(digestible only by those with intimate knowledge of the part and a
full set of logic schematics) and a functional description (all known
ways to observe the bug) as well as any known workarounds.  The
detailed description was strictly internal, but the remainder of the
of the list was sent to our marketing group (for distribution to
customers) on a regular basis.

To my knowledge, our bug list was and still is freely available.
There was (and probably still is) some deliberate delay in releasing
new bug reports.  These delays were for engineering reasons, not
marketing reasons.  We did not tell the world of a new bug until we
had replicated the bug ourselves, understood its cause, looked for
as-yet-unreported ways it might manifest itself, and looked diligently
for a workaround.

Intel's position is different (and somewhat understandable, even if it
is deplorable :-) in light of the fact that their chips are second
sourced.  If Intel made their bug list public, then AMD would have
free access to it.  One of the not-so-obvious advantages that Intel
gains by not making their bug list public is that they can implement
fixes to the undisclosed bugs and then reveal both the bug list and
the "new and improved" chip at the same time.  This prevents AMD from
beating them to the draw with a fix.

Again, these are my opinions.

   Brian McMinn                 brian.mcminn@amd.com
   Advanced Micro Devices       N5PSS
   Austin, Texas                1-(512)-462-5389
"You can't leap a chasm in two jumps."