Intel 2ND GENERATION CORE PROCESSOR FAMILY DESKTOP - SPECIFICATION UPDATE 01-2011 Specification page 20

BJ16. IO_SMI Indication in SMRAM State Save Area May be Set Incorrectly
Problem: The IO_SMI bit in SMRAM's location 7FA4H is set to "1" by the CPU to indicate a System
Management Interrupt (SMI) occurred as the result of executing an instruction that
reads from an I/O port. Due to this erratum, the IO_SMI bit may be incorrectly set by:
•A non-I/O instruction
•SMI is pending while a lower priority event interrupts
•A REP I/O read
•A I/O read that redirects to MWAIT
Implication: SMM handlers may get false IO_SMI indication.
Workaround: The SMM handler has to evaluate the saved context to determine if the SMI was
triggered by an instruction that read from an I/O port. The SMM handler must not
restart an I/O instruction if the platform has not been configured to generate a
synchronous SMI for the recorded I/O port address.
Status: For the steppings affected, see the Summary Tables of Changes.
BJ17. IRET under Certain Conditions May Cause an Unexpected Alignment
Check Exception
Problem: In IA-32e mode, it is possible to get an Alignment Check Exception (#AC) on the IRET
instruction even though alignment checks were disabled at the start of the IRET. This
can only occur if the IRET instruction is returning from CPL3 code to CPL3 code. IRETs
from CPL0/1/2 are not affected. This erratum can occur if the EFLAGS value on the
stack has the AC flag set, and the interrupt handler's stack is misaligned. In IA-32e
mode, RSP is aligned to a 16-byte boundary before pushing the stack frame.
Implication: In IA-32e mode, under the conditions given above, an IRET can get a #AC even if
alignment checks are disabled at the start of the IRET. This erratum can only be
observed with a software generated stack frame.
Workaround: Software should not generate misaligned stack frames for use with IRET.
Status: For the steppings affected, see the Summary Tables of Changes.
BJ18. LER MSRs May Be Unreliable
Problem: Due to certain internal processor events, updates to the LER (Last Exception Record)
MSRs, MSR_LER_FROM_LIP (1DDH) and MSR_LER_TO_LIP (1DEH), may happen when
no update was expected.
Implication: The values of the LER MSRs may be unreliable.
Workaround: None identified
Status: For the steppings affected, see the Summary Tables of Changes.
20 Specification Update