Intel Skylake bug causes PCs to freeze during complex workloads

[ky331]

Intel has confirmed that its Skylake processors suffer from a bug that can cause a system to freeze [or cause unpredictable system behaviour] when performing complex workloads. Discovered by mathematicians at the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), the bug occurs when using the GIMPS Prime95 application to find Mersenne primes...  Prime95, which has historically been used to benchmark and stress-test computers, uses Fast Fourier Transforms to multiply extremely large numbers. A particular exponent size, 14,942,209, has been found to cause the system crashes.

Intel has developed a fix, and is working with hardware partners to distribute it via a BIOS update.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/intel-skylake-bug-causes-pcs-to-freeze-during-complex-workloads/