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From: David Shepherd <des@inmos.co.uk>
Message-Id: <10773.9411281011@frogland.inmos.co.uk>
Subject: Intel Bug, the real effect
To: info-hol@cs.uidaho.edu (info-hol mailing list)
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 10:11:10 +0000 (GMT)
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Here's a report someone here has sent to me.

> +                           MINIGRAMS
> 
> Intel Corp shares fell in heavy trading on Friday after 
> investors began to worry over the company's recent admission 
> that that bug in the Pentium maths co-processor had not been 
> fixed when it was discovered but remained in millions of parts 
> it shipped this year: the company said blithely that "We 
> concluded the average end user might see a problem once in 
> 27,000 years," but the company has shot itself in both feet 
> because while the bug would affect very few users, the few users 
> of intensive mathematical routines in areas such as 
> computer-aided design - the very market that Intel has been 
> trying to win for Pentium over the RISC incumbents, need the 
> kind of accuracy that could be compromised if the bug showed up; 
> Intel has now changed the mask to fix the bug; Mathworks Inc, 
> Natick, Massachusetts has come up with a modification to its 
> mathematics program that corrects for the flaw; the glitch 
> occurs once in every 31,000m calculations when a computer is set 
> to pick random numbers for divisions.

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david shepherd:                           sgs-thomson microelectronics ltd 
email:des@inmos.co.uk                                      1000 aztec west
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