
Bug in the Pentium FPU (1994) - omnibrain
http://www.trnicely.net/pentbug/bugmail1.html
======
PhantomGremlin
For those young'uns who didn't suffer thru this, it turned into a really big
deal. There were some circumstances where a floating point division result
would be incorrect after about 4 decimal digits. The linked post is the
original public report of the bug.

Wikipedia [1] has a summary. Intel wound up offering to exchange faulty chips,
and took a $475 million charge against earnings.

But IMO the best part of the fiasco was all the jokes. Hundreds of jokes.
Probably thousands of jokes. E.g.[2]. One of my favorite jokes doesn't appear
on that list (but does appear on many others):

    
    
       We are Pentium of Borg.
       Division is futile.
       You will be approximated.
    

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug)
[2] [http://www.khd-
research.net/Tech/Computer/Misc/PBug_Jokes.tx...](http://www.khd-
research.net/Tech/Computer/Misc/PBug_Jokes.txt)

~~~
serf
I heard that Intel lost one of its' divisions.

------
StefanKarpinski
> You may use this information freely as long as you give me attribution by
> name and employer.

I'm curious about this last bit at the end of the email. Is there any legal
mechanism under which this is even remotely enforceable? You can't copyright
information; this isn't a patentable invention; trademark isn't relevant. I'm
curious why Dr. Nicely put this in there and what effect he thought it might
have.

