Re: 2.4 freezes on VIA KT133

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Fri, 25 May 2001 17:22:06 +0100 (BST)


> VIA hardware is not suitable for anything until we _know_ the
> truth about what is wrong. VIA is hiding something big.

I dont think thats true

> Creative Labs ought to toast VIA over blaming the sound card. :-)

Of course the card might be buggy too

The big problem with VIA is not that their hardware has bugs. Everyone has
bugs. I can get a problem with an intel chipset go to developer.intel.com and
generally get a straight answer and often a workaround. That makes me happy.
The problem isnt the bug, its not being given honest info on it.

If VIA had public errata that said things like 'Prefetch bursts can cause
problems unless you set bit 3 of blah' well we'd be able to evaluate the
performance impacts and people could make sensible decisions and have
reliable code.

Intel are not perfect either. We have a whole pile of laptops that crash when
speedstep triggers a trap we cannot handle. We have an APIC problem that took
much effort because they refused to help.

When vendors do help life gets a lot easier. AMD USB was a problem due to
errata. Once they published the fixes AMD USB ceased to be a problem.

Alan

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