Intel greatest mistake was the so-called “Pentium Flaw,” in which an obscure segment among the Pentium CPU’s 3.1 million transistors performed division incorrectly. In 1994 American mathematician Thomas Nicely was using a personal computer equipped with the then new Pentium chip from the Intel Corporation when he discovered a flaw in the chip that was producing inconsistent results. Intel isolated their flaw, so their solution was to keep the information within the company and not disclose the information
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Collin Pannell Warwick NT 1110 October 22, 2013 The Pentium Flaw During the year of 1994 one of Intel’s processors called the Pentium microprocessor chip had a small flaw inside the chip. These Pentium processors included something new called a floating-point unit, which is also know as a math coprocessor. These Pentium processors had this floating-point unit built into the processors, which makes them much faster. These chips that were made had errors on the floating-point unit that corrupted
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The Intel Pentium microprocessor had a design flaw in the mathematical division groupings. An internet blog site states, “Under certain data dependent conditions, low order bits of the result of floating-point division operations would be incorrect, an error that can compound in floating-point operations to much larger errors in subsequent calculations” (http://intelcorporation4uinfo.blogspot.com/2008/12/pentium-flaw.html). Due to not receiving a response from Intel on his findings, Professor Thomas
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The Pentium flaw was discovered in June 1994. The Pentium floating point flaw occurred in some models of the original Pentium microprocessor chip. Pentium processors with a clock speed of 120 MHz or higher are not affected by the flaw. The Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility checks for the floating point flaw on the affected microprocessors. Professor Thomas Nicely discovered the Pentium floating point unit flaw and emailed various contacts describing the flaw. Professor Nicely requested testing
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Home Page » Computers and Technology Intel Pentium Microprocessor Flaw In: Computers and Technology Intel Pentium Microprocessor Flaw Pentium Microprocessor Flaw NT1110 Pentium Microprocessor Flaw Pentium microprocessor flaw was in the floating-point math subsection. The flaw was found where the division result returned by the Pentium microprocessor was off by approximately sixty-one parts per million. Once Intel pinpointed the flaw, their solution was to keep the information within
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Professor Thomas Nicely discovered the “Pentium Flaw” June 1994. Basically Thomas was adding a Pentium system to some computers when he noticed some calculations were wrong. He then contacted Intel and told them about the problem. Ironically the person he contacted at Intel already knew about the problem but never said anything. He then contacted people to see if they were also having the same problem. After a couple days Thomas wasn’t the only person who realized there was a problem. People
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Ariel Torrente NT1110 Unit 5 Analysis Pentium Flaw Ariel Torrente NT1110 Unit 5 Analysis 7/27/2013 Pentium Flaw The Pentium flaw also nicknamed the Pentium FDIV bug, was an identified error in the Intel P5 Pentium floating unit. The presence of the bug can be checked manually by performing the following application that uses native floating numbers, including Windows Calculator or Microsoft Excel in Windows 95/98 (Pentium FDIV bug). The Pentium flaw was discovered byProfessor Thomas R.Nicely
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Structure and Logic Unit 5 Analysis THE FLAW IN THE INTEL PROCESSOR CHIP Since computer evolution, various computer companies have made their marks on the shores of revolutionizing computer as we know it. Hence, Intel, one of the world’s computer company giants, is not an exception to the zeal of making computers more efficient as the world evolves with time. However in 1994, Intel was hit by a major setback related to a flaw in its P5 Pentium Floating Point Unit (FPU) rolled out that year
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The Pentium Flaw Unit 5 Analasyis 1 The Pentium flaw is that on certain input data, the floating point divide instructions on the Pentium processor produce inaccurate results. Intel quoted an error rate of about 1 in 8.77*10^9 random divisions. The exact frequency depends on the type and precision of the operands; single-precision reciprocals, for example, are always returned correctly. (Nicely, 2011) This was first reported by Professor Thomas Nicely in October of 1994 by computing the
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PENTIUM FLAW By Michael Carreathers Facts The “Pentium Flaw” was discovered June nineteenth nineteen nighty four by Professor Thomas Nicely. Basically Thomas was adding a Pentium system to some computers when he noticed some calculations were wrong. He then contacted Intel and told them about the problem. Ironically the person he contacted at Intel already knew about the problem but never said anything. He then contacted people to see if they were also having the same problem. After a couple
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