* Posts by bogd

6 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2017

Intel's Atom C2000 chips are bricking products – and it's not just Cisco hit

bogd

Re: and bear it out until the end of warranty.

The 2 year EU warranty might not help very much... From your actual link:

"After six months, you can still hold the seller responsible for any defects during the full two-year guarantee period. However, if the seller contests this, you must be able to prove that the defect existed at the time of delivery. This is often difficult, and you will probably have to involve a technical expert."

Luckily, many of the affected products also carry manufacturer warranties of at least two years (Synology has 2, 3, or even 5 year warranties on their products).

bogd

Re: So when do I short CSCO/INTC stock??

Funny you should mention stock value - this is the actual title of an article published today: "Intel Is on a Roll After a Difficult Spell, So Buy the Stock Now"

Unfortunately, I cannot post the link, but here is a nice quote:

"...the quarter also solidified 2016 as a comeback year for the Silicon Valley company.

For years, Intel has tried to break into the mobile-phone business. Last year, it finally secured a deal with Apple to provide chips for the iPhone 7."

Quite funny in context, eh? :)

bogd

Re: @ pfSense, SuperMicro, Synology & others

There is something VERY interesting in the post on the pfsense blog:

"[The systems that experience the problem] will not suddenly stop working, but if the component fails, the system will not successfully reboot"

This is the first time somebody has said this clearly (from the Cisco FNs it is not clear whether the devices just stop, or they work properly until rebooted).

If the people at Netgate are right, this might be bad news for people running affected gear. Because it means that the problem could remain hidden for months or years - until you have a power failure (or you initiate a firmware upgrade), and poof! there go both your primary AND your backup unit... (be they spines, NASs, firewalls, or anything else)

bogd

You really shouldn't believe everything you read comming from various companies' PR persons.... :)

When JP said "contact us if you have an affected device", he actually meant "if you have a DEAD device". Other than that, I did contact Synology's support, and as far as I can tell they have no plan to either replace the current units, or change the silicon for future ones. Here's what they had to say on the issue:

"Intel has recently notified Synology regarding the issue of the processor’s increased degradation chance of a specific component after heavy, prolonged usage.

Synology has not currently seen any indication that this issue has caused an increase in failure rates for DiskStation or RackStation models equipped with Intel Atom C2000 series processors compared to other models manufactured in the same time frame not equipped with the affected processors.

It is safe to continue to use your device, however should you encounter any issues, our support teams will do everything they can to expedite your ticket."

This is similar to what I'm seeing on the pfsense blog - replace units as they die, and bear it out until the end of warranty.

And speaking of pfsense - damn, that Intel NDA seems to be watertight! Nobody can really say anything about the issue....

bogd

Re: @ pfSense, SuperMicro, Synology & others

There's a very long way from acknowledging the issue to actually fixing it. So far, all we have seen on this thread is a canned message from JP being posted repeatedly (and asking us to contact support).

Here is what Synology's support has to say on the matter:

"Intel has recently notified Synology regarding the issue of the processor’s increased degradation chance of a specific component after heavy, prolonged usage.

Synology has not currently seen any indication that this issue has caused an increase in failure rates for DiskStation or RackStation models equipped with Intel Atom C2000 series processors compared to other models manufactured in the same time frame not equipped with the affected processors.

It is safe to continue to use your device, however should you encounter any issues, our support teams will do everything they can to expedite your ticket. "

I read that as "we know about it, if your unit dies we'll replace it, but until then... good luck!"

Intel Atom chips have been dying for at least 18 months – only now is truth coming to light

bogd

I got the same canned reply at first. To Synology's credit, though, they followed up a few hours later with a more detailed message:

"Intel has recently notified Synology regarding the issue of the processor’s increased degradation chance of a specific component after heavy, prolonged usage.

Synology has not currently seen any indication that this issue has caused an increase in failure rates for DiskStation or RackStation models equipped with Intel Atom C2000 series processors compared to other models manufactured in the same time frame not equipped with the affected processors.

Intel has recently notified Synology regarding the issue of the processor’s increased degradation chance of a specific component after heavy, prolonged usage.

Synology has not currently seen any indication that this issue has caused an increase in failure rates for DiskStation or RackStation models equipped with Intel Atom C2000 series processors compared to other models manufactured in the same time frame not equipped with the affected processors.

It is safe to continue to use your device, however should you encounter any issues, our support teams will do everything they can to expedite your ticket. Technical Support can be reached via www.synology.com/ticket. Synology will post a follow-up on this topic once additional information is available.

"

While not very encouraging (it does sound like they're not going to replace anything until the unit has actually died), at least it's a bit more info on the topic :)