In
computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...
, Machine Check Architecture (MCA) is an
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
and
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
mechanism in which the
CPU reports hardware errors to the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
.
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
's P6 and Pentium 4 family processors,
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
's K7 and K8 family processors, as well as the Itanium architecture implement a machine check architecture that provides a mechanism for detecting and reporting hardware (machine) errors, such as: system bus errors,
ECC errors, parity errors,
cache
Cache, caching, or caché may refer to:
Places United States
* Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community
* Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community
* Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County
* Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah
* Cache County ...
errors, and
translation lookaside buffer
A translation lookaside buffer (TLB) is a memory cache that stores the recent translations of virtual memory to physical memory. It is used to reduce the time taken to access a user memory location. It can be called an address-translation cache. ...
errors. It consists of a set of model-specific registers (
MSR
MSR may refer to:
Science and technology
* Macrophage scavenger receptor, a receptor found in macrophages
* Magnetic stripe reader, a device used to read magnetic stripe cards such as credit cards
* M–sigma relation, in astrophysics
* Mars samp ...
s) that are used to set up machine checking and additional banks of MSRs used for recording errors that are detected.
See also
*
Machine-check exception
A machine check exception (MCE) is a type of computer error that occurs when a problem involving the computer's hardware is detected. With most mass-market personal computers, an MCE indicates faulty or misconfigured hardware.
The nature and ...
(MCE)
*
High availability
High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period.
Modernization has resulted in an increased reliance on these systems. Fo ...
(HA)
*
Reliability, availability and serviceability
Reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS), also known as reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM), is a computer hardware engineering term involving reliability engineering, high availability, and serviceability design. The p ...
(RAS)
*
Windows Hardware Error Architecture
Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) is an operating system hardware error handling mechanism introduced with Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 as a successor to Machine Check Architecture (MCA) on previous versions of Windows. The ...
(WHEA)
References
External links
Microsoft's article on Itanium's MCALinux x86 daemon for processing of machine checks
Computer architecture
x86 architecture
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