Intel Raptor Lake Chip Breaks Might Depend on the Weather
Mozilla worker Gabriele Svelto put out a story about how often Intel's Raptor Lake chips fail. What he found shows that these chip problems get more common when the air gets hot.
What the Crash Reports Say
Svelto looked at info from Firefox crash reports. His work shows that the times with the most chip breaks this year were when it was very hot in the Northern Hemisphere. There were so many reports that Mozilla had to stop its crash logging for a bit so they wouldn't get too much data.
Why It Might Be Happening Vmin Shift
Svelto thinks the trouble is with Intel's gear. Many breaks happened on PCs using the Core i7-14700K chip. The story says that Raptor Lake chips mess up their timing and voltage control, and it gets worse when it's hot. This problem, called Vmin Shift, might even harm the CPU for good if it deals with too much voltage.
What Intel Is Doing About It
Intel has tried to fix these issues before. The company put out a few updates to their microcode, with the newest one released a few weeks back, to help stop the problem.