NT1110T
The Pentium Flaw The Pentium microprocessor flaw is a division error with floating point numbers; it was first discovered by Intel testers in June of 1994. Intel managers said the problem was so small it would not affect very many people, so they carried on with production and told no one outside of the company. They were right that it only affected a few customers, however not disclosing this made Intel look untrustworthy. Within that same month Dr.Nicely tested 486 Pentium machines two different ways narrowing the problem down to the Pentium processor itself. After eliminating all other factors Dr. Nicely contacted Intel technical support, the support technician then confirmed Dr. Nicely’s problem and stated that it has not been reported before. After a while of not hearing from Intel on the Issue Dr. Nicely decided to Email a few people who this problem may affect. After the email everything took off like wildfire on over the great and terrible power of the internet. People are up in arms and begin confirming and testing this problem all over the world. During this Intel feigns ignorance still stating there is no problem. This only continued to fuel the flames. So Intel decides that it will only replace the chip if they determined that it has been used in an application that would be affected by the flaw. People become irate. Finally in December Intel apologizes for the flaw and is willing to replace all chips, costing them over 420 million. They also hire on a lot of technician to help with the replacements and a few full time employees to respond to all postings on the internet about Intel. If this problem occurred today, hopefully the company would handle the PR aspect a little better. However nontechnical computer users greatly outweigh the technical, meaning most consumers may not be bothered by such a problem, or if they are just simply replace the computer, no harm no foul.
Reference: www.willamette.edu/~mjaneba/pentprob.html; www.emery.com/1e/pentium.htm