Watch Your Step(ping): Atoms Breaking Apart

This is a bug in certain Atom processors, fixed in a microcode update. The errata states:

> Under complex microarchitectural conditions, incorrect instruction bytes may be used for code with linear addresses bits 5:4 = 10b.

That is, code at addresses ending in hex 2x, 6x, Ax or Ex might randomly get substituted with other code.

Pretty spooky - the bug basically causes the CPU to occasionally go off and execute totally incorrect instructions, often resulting in a crash. The scarier problem is that the bug might not always wind up crashing - maybe it just runs the wrong instruction and produces the wrong result…