Facepalm: Instability points with Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs proceed to have an effect on customers worldwide. Even internet browsers are reportedly “feeling the warmth,” with an uptick in crash experiences, notably in areas experiencing intense summer season temperatures.
Mozilla Firefox has now joined the rising checklist of software program affected by the Raptor Lake instability points that Intel first acknowledged in 2024. In accordance with Mozilla Employees Platform Engineer Gabriele Svelto, the open-source browser is experiencing a noticeable enhance in crashes – notably in areas presently dealing with excessive summer season temperatures.
Svelto mentioned that customers within the Northern Hemisphere are being hit the toughest, and that he may inform which European international locations have been experiencing warmth waves simply by taking a look at Firefox crash experiences. Most of those logs got here from techniques powered by Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs.
Raptor Lake processors are recognized to endure from timing and voltage irregularities that worsen as temperatures rise. The problem, generally known as Vmin Shift, can probably trigger everlasting CPU injury by supplying unsafe voltage ranges. Intel has tried to mitigate the issue with a number of firmware and microcode updates, the latest of which was launched just some weeks in the past.
The scenario has grew to become so problematic that Mozilla was lately pressured to disable a bot designed to robotically ship crash experiences again to the inspiration’s servers. The bot was overwhelmingly detecting crash situations on techniques working Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs, prompting builders to filter out experiences from these particular fashions.
Svelto confirmed that the difficulty is 100% an Intel downside, including that a good portion of the crashes have been coming from machines powered by the favored Core i7-14700K processor. Through the dialogue, he even reached out to at least one seemingly unaffected person with a secure Raptor Lake system, asking them to check the newest Firefox Nightly construct.
Mozilla is presently experimenting with a brand new library that is not but prepared for normal launch, but it surely may set off the Vmin Shift bug “very often” throughout testing, Svelto warned.
The most recent wave of Firefox crashes provides to the rising refrain of concern surrounding Intel’s Thirteenth- and 14th-generation CPUs. With continued instability, some customers are actually being suggested to avoid Raptor Lake chips till Intel resolves the difficulty. Within the meantime, AMD seems to be benefiting from the fallout, gaining floor with its extremely secure Ryzen processors. Intel is reportedly working to revive person confidence with its upcoming Arrow Lake structure, however the street forward could also be steep.
