AMD Admits Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs are Broken, promises BIOS update
AMD claims to have figured out why their new Ryzen 3000 CPUs are unable to produce random data when the RDRAND instruction is called. They promise that a BIOS update will be made available shortly. This is good news for those who want to run modern Linux distributions or Windows games like Destiny 2 on these chips since it is currently impossible to use any software which takes advantage of the RDRAND instruction on AMDs flawed new CPUs.
AMD story, according to German publication heise.de, is:
"AMD has identified the root cause and implemented a BIOS fix for an issue impacting the ability to run certain Linux distributions and Destiny 2 on Ryzen 3000 processors. We have distributed an updated BIOS to our motherboard partners, and we expect consumers to have access to the new BIOS over the coming days."
AMD has not issued any press release or replied to our inquiries or otherwise publicly admitted that RDRAND is plain broken on Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. The common Linux system manager systemd uses this instruction as of version 240. Linux distributions using systemd 240+ will therefore simply not boot on Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. There is apparently also some Windows game called "Destiny 2" which relies on this instruction.
We consider heise.de to be a reputable publication and believe the AMD statement to be accurate even though AMD does not appear to have published or admitted anything related to this major flaw in their new CPUs anywhere on their website or their own asocial media channels. We do not have any information beyond the above statement since AMD has not provided any.
It is a bit telling that AMD flat out ignored all question relating to this defect and only gave the larger outlet heise.de a brief statement.
published 2019-07-12 - last edited 2019-07-30
Enable comment auto-refresher