14 DAY TRIAL // Intel is apparently having some troubles with the first revision of its Sandy Bridge-E processors, which forced the company to disable the support for VT-d virtualization, a feature that sees widespread use in the server market.
The bug, which is called an errata in Intel's terminology, affects the C1 stepping of this chip, expected to launch in less than two months from now.
In order to fix this issue, Intel will build a second revision of these CPUs, that will carry the C2 designation.
According to VR-Zone, Intel is already manufacturing C1 stepping processors, but the company still doesn't know when C2 will be ready for mass production.
The only good news regarding this issue is that VT-d doesn't affect the consumer Sandy Bridge-E CPUs as these don't come with this feature enabled, but server customers will be most certainly affected since VT-d sees widespread use in this space.
As a result, Intel will most certainly delay the launch of Sandy Bridge-E Xeon processors, which is in line with other reports regarding these next-generation processors have revealed.
In addition to VT-d support, Sandy Bridge-E CPUs have also reportedly lost their support for PCI Express 3.0 at launch as Intel didn't have enough third party PCIe Gen 3 add-on cards to test the compatibility of their processors.
Nonetheless, some PCI Express 3.0 devices are still likely to work, but Intel isn't capable of certifying compatibility.
Speaking of compatibility, Intel has retained support for Windows XP with the Waimea Bay platform, and this will work with both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of XP, although the chip maker won't provide Rapid Storage drivers for the 32-bit version of the OS.
The first Intel Sandy Bridge-E processors are expected to arrive on November 14, and the initial desktop CPU batch will include three CPUs.