Unique ID codes on mobile PIIs no accident

Register reader takes on Chipzilla

Updated Intel has continued to come under fire over unique ID codes on the PII chip fiasco it engineered. Yesterday, the chip giant claimed the problem was a bug -– a phenomenon Intel prefers to call an erratum. Now it is claiming the bug was driving the van that delivered the chips. Readers of The Register have since cried foul, accusing Intel of hastily covering its tracks "Special PSN codes and MSR.FEATURE_FLAGS indicating PSN don't get added by accident," said one reader. The criticism continued: "If this was an accident then I'm supposed to believe that Intel is blaming this whole mess on a bunch of their own incompetent verification engineers." Intel is now claiming the 'erratum' lies not so much in the technology but in the shipping of that technology. A representative of Intel UK said: "This facility was built-in as a prototype technology - it was for our own testing purposes. It should have been turned off before it was shipped, but it wasn't - that was the erratum." Responding to the details covered in yesterday's story, the Chipzilla representative said to day that a fix for the bug (sorry, 'erratum') was in the pipeline. "We have identified a BIOS workaround to address the erratum. Users can contact their computer manufacturers for the BIOS workaround specific to their computer which corrects this erratum." ®