Firefox patches zlib-rs to dodge Raptor Lake CPU crash

Mozilla developer Mike Hommey landed a workaround in Firefox’s vendored zlib-rs deflate code to stop crashes seen on Intel Raptor Lake processors. The fix sits in third_party/rust/zlib-rs/src/deflate/, suggesting a specific instruction sequence in the Rust port of zlib was tripping an erratum or microarchitectural bug on 13th-gen Intel silicon rather than a logic error in the library itself.

Raptor Lake has a track record of instability tied to voltage and microcode issues, and applications using tight SIMD or compression loops have surfaced as reliable reproducers. Shipping a software-side workaround in the browser is pragmatic: it protects users now without waiting for Intel microcode updates or OEM BIOS rollouts to reach the field.