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I have a Dell XPS 7590, with an Intel® Core™ i9-9980HK CPU @ 2.40GHZ processor. The expected number of cores for this device are 8 with 16 threads. However, neither in the BIOS nor the OS (I'm running PopOS) does it show 8/16. Instead it shows 7/14. Suggesting that a core is dead. I've never encountered this problem before. Can just a single core die?

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    Please post the outputs of cat /proc/cpuinfo and sudo dmidecode | awk '/Intel/,/^$/'. Lastly dmesg may also have some info on CPU detection during startup that may be relevant. – Mokubai♦ Oct 27 '20 at 7:08
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    Looks like it was some extremely strange behavior from BIOS. I reset to factory settings and it showed up on the next reboot for both BIOS and OS. I think I may have updated my BIOS while having a number of cores turned off (for battery life) and perhaps it was unable to account for it in the process somehow. I don't know if this is a question that will help other people. Feel free to close. – Brandon Bertelsen Oct 27 '20 at 8:37
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    @BrandonBertelsen You may want to add that as an answer rather than a comment, it will be much more visible for people with the same issue stumbling on this question. – jcaron Oct 27 '20 at 12:51
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Yes, a single core on a CPU can die. It is unusual for it to manifest this way, usually it would cause instability rather than be outright missing. Pop the CPU out and look for bent pins in the socket or thermal paste gumming up some of the pads on the bottom of the CPU.

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    Individual CPU cores don't have many dedicated pins (do they have any at all?), so I seriously doubt this will help. – Dmitry Grigoryev Oct 27 '20 at 12:40
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    Also the user is using a laptop with a soldered cpu so I don't think this is an option. – akaltar Oct 27 '20 at 13:00
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I reset BIOS to factory settings and on my next reboot, all cores expected showed up.

I believe I may have updated my BIOS while having a number of cores turned off (for battery life) and perhaps it was unable to account for it in the process somehow.

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