The Machine Check Architecture

Introduction

With the advent of the Pentium® 4 processor, the Machine Check Architecture (MCA) became part of the IA32 processor architecture spec. It is therefore guaranteed to operate in the same manner in future IA32 processors. In addition, with the exception of the items described in this section, it is backward compatible with the MCA implementations on the Pentium® and P6 processor families [see “MCA Enhanced” on page 588 and “Machine Check Architecture (MCA)” on page 504].

The MCA is the processor's internal error logging facility. It logs both soft (i.e., correctable) errors as well as hard errors. If the processor is enabled to generate the Machine Check exception (CR4[MCE] = 1), the exception is generated ...

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