A Limited Subset of Sun Fire System/Processor Boards May be Vulnerable to Uncorrectable Errors in its L2 SRAM

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Impact

Certain Sun Fire 12k/15k, Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800, Sun Fire V1280, and Netra 1280 system/processor boards manufactured with a particular SRAM may be vulnerable to component weakness resulting in the possibility of system interrupts due to L2 SRAM Uncorrectable Errors (UEs).

Note: The original version of this Sun Alert also listed Sun Fire 280R/V480/V880, Sun Blade 1000/2000 and Netra 20 systems. At this time Sun is removing these systems from the potentially affected system list.

The reason these systems were included in the initial release of the Sun Alert was that some of them were manufactured using the same SRAMs that were shown to be the root cause of this issue on on the Sun Fire 12k/15k and Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800, Sun Fire V1280, and Netra 1280 systems. Therefore, they were included to be conservative rather than because of any known cases on these platforms.

Since then, Sun has determined that 280R/V480/V880, Sun Blade 1000/2000 and Netra 20 systems that contain these specific SRAMs are demonstrating reliability which is well above the design expectations.

The Source of the particular SRAM has neen identified including the period of time during which they were produced. As a result, we have been able to identify the particular SRAM which may have been affected.

Contributing Factors

This issue can occur on the following platforms:

SPARC

• Sun Fire 12K, Sun Fire 15K
• Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800
• Sun Fire V1280
• Netra 1280

This issue only occurs within a subset of total SRAM supply and not all SRAM are impacted.

The probability of a system being affected by this issue is dependent on the amount of SRAM contained within the system. This, in turn, is dependent on the number of CPUs within a system.

Systems not affected:

UltraSPARC IV based systems

• Sun Fire E20K/E25K
• Sun Fire V490/V890
• Sun Fire E2900/E4900/E6900
• Sun Fire 280R/V480/V880

UltraSPARC IIIi based systems

• Sun Fire V120/V210/V240/V440
• Sun Blade 1000/2000
• Sun Blade 1500/2500
• Netra 240/440
• Netra 20

UltraSPARC III 600/750 MHz boards

Symptoms

Should the described issue occur, Sun Fire 12k/15k, Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800, Sun Fire V1280 and Netra 1280 systems may experience messages similar to the following:

    Error 0x71 (Syndrome 0x71)
    L2 cache UE events (WDU,CPU,EDU,UCU)

Workaround

For Sun Fire F12/F15K, Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800, V1280, and Netra 1280. Your Sun Services Representative has access to a tool capable of identifying boards which may experience this issue. The Tool utilizes specific data to determine if a system board has a particular SRAM type. Refer to Infodoc 78871 at: http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-9-78871 for details. For these uniboard based systems, a Field Change Order (FCO) will address how the impacted board will be replaced.

Resolution

This issue is resolved with the release of FCO A0248-1.

Work with your Sun Services Representative to determine if you have affected SRAM. If SRAM is impacted by this issue, your Sun Representative will follow the criteria established by Sun Engineering as outlined in a FCO to replace all impacted boards.

Modification History


Date: 05-NOV-2004

• Updated Contributing Factors and Relief Workaround sections

Date: 28-JUL-2005

• State: Resolved
• Updated Resolution section

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