Intel Resumes Shipping Xeon MCC Processors After Bug is Mitigated

Intel has confirmed that it had paused shipments of some of its fourth-gen Xeon Sapphire Rapids processors due to a newly-discovered bug, but it hadn’t set a specific date for shipments to resume. The company has now issued a statement indicating that it has developed a firmware fix and has resumed shipments. 

“Last week, we informed you of an issue on a subset of 4th Generation Intel Xeon Medium Core Count Processors (SPR-MCC) that could interrupt system operation under certain conditions. Out of an abundance of caution, we temporarily paused some SPR-MCC shipments while we thoroughly evaluated a firmware mitigation. We are now confident the firmware mitigation addresses the issue. We have resumed shipping all versions of SPR-MCC and are working with customers to deploy the firmware as needed.” — Intel spokesperson to Tom’s Hardware. 

Intel originally paused the shipments of a subset of its oft-delayed fourth-gen Sapphire Rapids processor line after it discovered a bug that “could interrupt system operations under certain conditions,” but the company still hasn’t shared specifics of the now-mitigated issue.

Intel said that it decided to pause shipments of the impacted processors out of an abundance of caution while it worked on the firmware fix. Discovering new bugs in already-shipping processors certainly isn’t uncommon, but it is uncommon for those types of bugs to lead to a halt in shipments, implying that this was more than a garden-variety erratum. Intel did say the firmware mitigation isn’t expected to have any performance impacts, though.