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Unit 5 Analysis 1: Pentium Flaw

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In June, 1994 the media came out with a story that one of Intel’s Pentium microprocessors had a floating point unit flaw (FPU). This flaw had to do with a math calculation that gave out wrong number after you put in an equation. The story about this flaw came to light after Professor by the name of Thomas Nicely, who was a mathematics professor at Lynchburg collage. Nicely was trying to compute the sum of a reciprocal of a large group of prime numbers on his Pentium based computer. When he checked the results they were different by a large amount from the theoretical values. By running the same test program on a different computer with a 486CPU, he came up with the right numbers this lead him to be able to track down the error to the Pentium itself. After finding the problem Nicely send out an email to Intel describing the problem that he had come across in his test. The email stated that there was a flaw in the Pentium floating point unit (FPU). With no response back from Intel Nicely posted a general notice on the internet asking people to confirm his findings. When the media got wind of this story Nicely did some magazine and T.V interviews about what his test resolute showed him. The flaw in the Pentium flaw was not an isolated incident the flaw was quickly verified by other people around the world in the scientific community, which became referred to as the Pentium FDIV bug. When the story first broke Intel’s initial response was to deny that there was a kind of a problem with there chips. But as the information got out on the internet the public wanted action to be taken. So Intel had to retract there statement that there was nothing wrong, to stating that although there was indeed a flaw in its chips, the defect was so insignificant to the majority of users. The average user would never even notice a problem in the flawed chip and that an error is only likely to occur once in ever nine billion random floating point divide that an average spread sheet user could encounter this subtle flaw once in every 27,000 years of use. Hearing this news IBM decided to do their own independent study on the Pentium microprocessor chip which would challenge Intel’s statement. IBM tests concluded that the FPU flaw would seriously impact the work of the majority of these users in and out of the scientific community. Within a month IBM halted all shipments on the Pentium based computers, which only effected a small amount of IBM’s computer production. When Intel first lead out its policy and admitting that there was a problem, they were only going to replace Pentium chips for those users who could show that they had the flawed chip. But as the public’s mounting pressure on Intel in sued, the company announced its plans to do a total recall and replacement for any Pentium owner who asked for one. It should be made aware that long before the news of the flaw made it to the press, Intel known about the problem and had already corrected it on its other chip versions. Instead of Intel just destroying the flawed chips they continued to sale them base on their findings stated earlier. Intel’s plain was to just continue to distribute the flawed chip until the new version was ready and the stock of the flawed chips were gone. In the end it cost Intel $475 million to fix the problem. In the end I don’t think Intel handled the problem correctly. I know as a company they want to make money not spend it, but by Intel trying to sweep it under the rug as they say. When it came out to the public they should have just came forward and told the public that they were working on fixing the problem and just replace the individuals who had the flaw. If the public would have boy coted the company they could have lost a lot more money than they did by just fixing it. I believe that if the same problem happened today Intel could be put out of business, because there is a lot of competition out there. By letting flawed chips get out and they don’t get ahead of the bad publicity it would have a lot of people stop using their product, which could have them to start using the competition’s chips. As long as Intel sticks to the approach of telling the truth and to replace flawed chips upon request, regardless of how insignificant the flaw maybe then they should be ok.

Reference www.engr.sjsu.edu/e10/E10pdf/.../Flaw_Intel_Pentium_Chip_case.doc
The Flaw in the Intel Pentium Chip
From: Fleddermann, C. B. (2004) Engineering ethics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Helm, L. (1994, December 13). News analysis: Intel's handling of the Pentium defect chips at its image. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/1994-12-13/business/fi-8491_1_intel-inside

http://www.willamette.edu/~mjaneba/pentprob.html
Statistical Analysis of Floating Point Flaw in the Pentium (TM) Processor (1994), Sharangpani and Barton, Intel Corporation, Nov. 30,1994.The Pentium Papers collection is an archive with many original sources from the principal parties involved.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2012, April 5). Pentium FDIV bug. Retrieved April 20, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

NT1110 Unit 5 Unit 5 Analysis 1: Pentium Flaw

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