In computing, Machine Check Architecture (MCA) refers to a mechanism in which the CPU reports hardware errors to the operating system.
Intel's Pentium 4, Intel Xeon, P6 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 errors, and translation lookaside buffer errors. It consists of a set of model-specific registers (MSRs) that are used to set up machine checking and additional banks of MSRs used for recording errors that are detected.
A similar concept in IBM servers is referred to as first failure data capture.
Famous quotes containing the words machine, check and/or architecture:
“Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time,
Not, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice
As full of labor as a wise man’s art.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)