Saturday, June 6, 2009

Pentium flaw

In New vogue time period 1994, Intel engineers discovered a flaw among the floating-point science section of the Pentium semiconductor device. below bound information dependent conditions, low order bits of the results of floating-point division operations would be incorrect, an error that may quickly compound in floating-point operations to lots of larger errors in succeeding calculations. Intel corrected the error throughout a future chip revision, however but declined to disclose it.

In New vogue time period 1994, Dr. Thomas Nicely, academician of arithmetic at metropolis college severally discovered the bug, & upon receiving no response from his inquiry to Intel, on New vogue time period thirty announce a message on computer network.Word of the bug unfold quickly on computer network therefore to the trade press. as a results of the bug was simple to duplicate by a mean user (there was a sequence of numbers one may enter into the OS calculator to point the error), Intel's statements that it had been minor ANd "not even associate erratum" weren't accepted by several notebook computer users. throughout Thanksgiving 1994, The the big apple Times ran a chunk by journalist John man of science spotlighting the error. Intel modified its position and offered to exchange each chip, quickly fixing place place associate outsize end-user support organization. This resulted throughout a $500 million charge against Intel's 1994 revenue.

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