Intel cooking the Ring Bus on dying 13th and 14th Gen Core CPUs, says leaker

We're sure that you've heard of the instability and other issues plaguing Intel 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core CPUs, but now we're hearing that there are some bigger issues troubling Intel right now:

In a new video from Moore's Law is Dead, we're hearing the issue plaguing Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" and 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors experiencing failures is because of the Ring Bus "getting cooked" because of high voltages being fed into it.

MLID's sources said that the "leading theory inside Intel right now" is that the Ring Bus is "getting cooked because it's fed the by the same rail as the P-Cores and E-Cores". Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs needed to hit incredible high voltages in order to "be competitive" with AMD's new Zen 4 platform at the time.

The first source of MLID says that "it seems like it was just pushed too hard" continuing that this is just an "inherent flaw that would be in Barlett Lake too IF it's overvolted". The source continued, saying that Meteor Lake "isn't affected".

• Read more: Intel officially responds to 13th and 14th Gen CPU instability reports

The second source said: "I never worked directly on Raptor Lake (Intel Design Engineer), but I did have exposure to Alder Lake, and I can confirm that they were very concerned about the ring bus getting damaged if the voltage was pushed too high. I can also confirm that Raptor Lake was rushed through the design and validation process".

MLID's third source said: (Intel Foundry Services) can tell you that Raptor Lake was rushed through our Fab in Arizona in record time, but it's also produced in other fabs. However, this location (Arizona) is notable because I can confirm that there was an Oxidation issue by some failure in our HVAC system between March & June 2023. It was so bad that Keyvan Esfarjani had to fly in to make a decision about which wafers (which cost as much as Model X each) needed to be thrown away. To be clear, I don't know what decision was made, but I do know that this event DID happen. And by the way, it affected Sapphire Rapids yields as well, although I doubt it's an issue wasn't fixed by now".