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Topic: Pentium FDIV bug

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	Computer bug
		A computer bug is a fault in a computer program which prevents it from working correctly.
		She traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug.
		Once the bug is reproduced, the programmer can use a debugger or some other tool to monitor the execution of the program in the faulty region, and (eventually) find the problem.
	www.ebroadcast.com.au /lookup/encyclopedia/co/Computer_bug.html (917 words)

	Pentium FDIV bug
		This result was quickly verified by other people around the Internet, and became known as the Pentium FDIV bug (FDIV is the x86 assembly language instruction for floating point division).
		Any Pentium family processor with a clock speed greater than 100 MHz is new enough not to have this bug.
		However, although most independent estimates found the bug to be of little importance and have negligible effect on most uses, it has caused a great public outrcry.
	www.ebroadcast.com.au /lookup/encyclopedia/pe/Pentium_FDIV_bug.html (232 words)

	Wikinfo \| Pentium
		Pentium OverDrive processors were released at speeds of 63 and 83MHz as an upgrade option for older 486-class computers.
		In early 5 volt 60 MHz and 66 MHz Pentiums, a problem in the floating point unit code when doing division was discovered in 1994 and is known as the Pentium FDIV bug.
		The Pentium brand is now used for desktop parts, the Celeron brand is used for "value" parts (typically lower performance and lower price), and the Xeon brand is used for high-performance parts suitable for servers and power-users.
	www.wikinfo.org /wiki.php?title=Pentium (518 words)

	Software bug Summary
		Other bugs lead to security problems; for example, a common type of bug which allows a buffer overflow may allow a malicious user to execute other programs that are normally not allowed to run.
		A bug in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine was directly responsible for patient deaths and in 1996, the European Space Agency's US$1 billion prototype Ariane 5 rocket was destroyed less than a minute after launch, due to a bug in the on-board guidance computer program.
		One cause of the Therac-25 radiation machine deaths was a bug that occurred only when the machine operator very rapidly entered a treatment plan; it took days of practice to become able to do this, so the bug did not manifest in testing or when the manufacturer attempted to duplicate it.
	www.bookrags.com /Software_bug (2733 words)

	Pentium information - Search.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The Pentium was originally to be named 80586 or i586, but due to an ongoing battle with Advanced Micro Devices over the use of the previous processor generations' names--80386 and 80486--and the inability to trademark a number, Intel enlisted the help of Lexicon Branding in order to give their new processor line the Pentium brand.
		Subsequently, the P55C was released as the Pentium with MMX Technology (usually just called Pentium MMX); it was based on the P5 core, the 0.35 µm process was also used for this series, but it had a new set of 57 "MMX" instructions to improve working on multimedia tasks, such as encoding and decoding media.
		The Pentium brand is traditionally used for desktop parts, the Celeron brand is used for "value" parts (typically lower performance and lower price), and the Xeon brand is used for high-performance parts suitable for servers and workstations.
	domainhelp.search.com /reference/Pentium (976 words)

	P54C Erratum 23 (FDIV bug). (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		After this bug was proven to exist, Intel denied that it was a problem.
		I made the mistake of stating publicly that I didn't think that the FDIV bug was that big of a problem.
		In this case, it was Intel's handling of the bug that caused all of the public outcry -- not the bug itself.
	www.x86.org /errata/feb97/bugs.htm (547 words)

	The Role of Proof in Ensuring Software and Hardware Reliability
		Far from remaining in the realm of mathematical specialists, bugs such as the FDIV bug attract the attention of the general population, if the public’s reaction to the FDIV bug is any indication.
		Not wanting to repeat the FDIV bug of Intel (and suffer the enormous financial cost), they sought a proof of the correctness of part of their chip.
		No bugs have been found in the portion of the chip that was proved correct with the theorem prover that differ from the given specification.
	www.cs.berkeley.edu /~gporter/pubs/roleofproof.html (2385 words)

	MacKiDo/History/History_PentBug
		While it is not unusual for Hardware bugs in processors it is rare that they are this serious, furthermore Intel went out of their way to hide the bug.
		(2) The bug was found on many different pentiums including the 60, 66, 75 and 90 mhz pentium chips, and effected millions of users.
		Intel minimized the bug by distorting how serious it was to many people telling people "It only happens to calculations at the 8th place" or that it was only an issue to researchers and scientists.
	www.mackido.com /History/History_PentBug.html (1098 words)

	Pentium FDIV bug - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The Pentium FDIV bug was a bug in Intel's original Pentium floating point unit.
		This flaw in the Pentium FPU was quickly verified by other people around the Internet, and became known as the Pentium FDIV bug (FDIV is the x86 assembly language instruction for floating point division).
		Pentium's FDIV bug became a topic for jokes in computer folklore; see External links.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug (672 words)

	Bugs in the Intel Microprocessors (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The Pentium FDIV bug is the most famous (or infamous) of the Intel microprocessor bugs.
		It was caused by an error in a lookup table that was a part of Intel's SRT algorithm that was to be faster and more accurate.
		A 3-D plot of the ratio 4195835/3145727 calculated on a Pentium with FDIV bug.
	www.cs.earlham.edu /~dusko/cs63/fdiv.html (532 words)

	Welcome
		This results in optimum speed and code size, but may produce incorrect results on flawed Pentium processors.You should read documentation from Microsoft and Intel to be shure if you need to change your CPU or to use a special driver.
		We also must inform you there is another big bug in Pentium procesor but it only apear if you have a computer with more than one procesor AND an AGP card.
		This bug can not be corected through a software drivere like in FDiv bug.
	www.soft.tahionic.com /the-flaw.html (518 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		If you are using a Pentium machine today then it will have the bug - Intel is now saying that it is sampling fixed chips with its manufacturer-customers, but that machines with corrected chips are not likely to appear in the shops until early next year.
		To-date we only have two reported examples to draw on: one Pentium user; an undergraduate mathematics student says that he had his request for a replacement chip turned down, despite the fact that he could be doing these complex calculations on his PC.
		Then in the middle of the week analysts at Prudential Securities said they believed that the technical difficulties with Pentium's FDIV instruction were more deep-seated than previously thought, and a rumour spread on Wall St that all the faulty Pentiums would be recalled.
	bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu /CIC/archive/fdiv_bug (1463 words)

	[No title]
		The best characteristic and only characteristic of the bug to come from Intel is its 1 in 9 billion probability of occurring with random operands.
		The worst characteristic of the bug is that the specific operands that are most at risk are integers +/- very small deltas.
		This bug hits between 50 and 2000 single precision dividend divisor pairs (out of a total of 64 trillion.) Another misperception is related to the magnitude of the relative error.
	members.cox.net /srice1/pentbug/tim_coe.txt (1361 words)

	P*ntium FDIV flaw FAQ
		TO: Whom it may concern FROM: Thomas R. Nicely (current e-mail address available at http://www.trnicely.net/email.html) RE: Pntium FDIV* flaw DATE: 2006.09.11.2300 EDT This document may be reproduced and distributed for educational and non-profit purposes.
		Enumerated below are several questions that have frequently been posed to me, regarding the discovery, nature, and implications of the Pntium FDIV* flaw.
		I have provided a C source code, and corresponding DOS executable, for the purpose of testing for the bug; see pentbug.zip.
	www.trnicely.net /pentbug/pentbug.html (462 words)

	Dr. Dobb's \| Undocumented Corner \| July 22, 2001
		At any rate, there is a small bug (basically, a 0 appears several places in a table where a +2 ought to be) in the Pentium's implementation of the SRT divider.
		On each cycle, the Pentium is multiplying the key by a factor of 4; and 2.
		However, the only way I could imagine the error being this rare was that the Pentium divider was using a carry-save adder to do the remainder calculation and that the long, specific, and therefore rare history associated with the buildup of long coincident sequences of 1s in carry-save remainders was involved with the failure.
	www.ddj.com /184409542?pgno=23 (5339 words)

	Canonical List of Pentium Jokes
		Pentium commercial: Looking out from inside the computer, through the monitor, at a couple using a spreadsheet for their expenses.
		Give any floating point division x/y on an Intel Pentium chip, you can either know the exact values x and y, or you can know the exact value of the quotient x/y, but it is impossible on a Pentium to know the precise values of x, y and x/y.
		Bring your Pentiums with you because we're having a Great Competition in which you have to devise programs or processes that are super fast and very efficient.The Goal here: The Pentium that comes up with the wrong answer first gets to have its cooling fans torn off.
	www.mcs.drexel.edu /~uminger/pentium.html (3239 words)

	Pentium 1 FDIV bug
		The FDIV bug is a defect in early Pentium 1 CPUs which can cause math errors when multiplying and dividing in the millions.
		Pentium 60 to 100 had the bug but many systems with those CPUs don't.
		Pentium 120 and above does not have this bug at all.
	www.dosgames.com /forum/about2535.html (377 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		:) ------------------ November Election results may be due to Intel Pentium bug :-) An anonymous source in the Democratic Party has revealed that the sweeping landslide victory of the Republicans in November may have been due to an obscure bug in the Intel Pentium computer chip.
		When questioned about the news Senator Bob Dole (r) commented that he believed the Intel Pentium chip was far better than anyone had thought.
		In late breaking news today legal briefs were filed in Chicago by former senator Dan Rostenkowski's attorneys which claimed that the irregularities at the House Bank and the House Post Office were actually due to Pentium chip calculation errors.
	www.symuli.com /humor/pentium.txt (506 words)

	File 59014
		DETAILS Here are some places where the floating-point bug could potentially be a problem for Oracle software: o It is possible to write a Pro*C or an OCI program that binds a FLOAT variable to be inserted into the database, or defines a FLOAT variable to accept output from the database.
		The Pentium bug could cause it to behave slightly less optimally, but there is no possible way that this could corrupt data or generate incorrect results.
		If the approximation is off because of the Pentium bug, then it could take slightly longer to reach the desired result; but once again, there is absolutely no possibility of data corruption or incorrect results.
	www.uaex.edu /srea/osee/59014.htm (647 words)

	"FDIV Pentium Bug Fix in BP" by TERJE MATHISEN
		Here's something just posted to comp.lang.pascal on Usenet: From: Terje.Mathisen@hda.hydro.com (Terje Mathisen) Subject: FDIV fix for BP (fast and exact) Date: 1 Dec 1994 11:07:51 GMT I have been working with Cleve Moler (from MathWorks) and Tim Coe about a sw workaround for the Pentium FDIV bug.
		During the unit startup code, I test the FDIV instruction, and if if fails, initialize a 16-byte table of critical nibble values.
		If FDIV passes, the table is left empty, and no fixups will be done on divisions.
	www.bsdg.org /SWAG/DATATYPE/0037.PAS.html (332 words)

	denMike's tiny page
		This bug is therefore not found on Pentium Pro, Pentium II, K6, and Cyrix M1/M2.
		The Pentium-F0 bug is OS-independent, which means, that it will trash ANY OS, including OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 95, and Linux, all of which is thought of as 'safe' OS'es (they won't crash).
		The bug is the result of an invalid instruction.
	mtech.dk /thomsen/program/f0bug.php (1048 words)

	Pentium-FDIV-Bug - Wikipedia
		Der Fehler betrifft aber keineswegs ausschließlich den Befehl FDIV, wie man vermuten könnte.
		Als Entdecker, dem es zu verdanken ist, dass der Fehler der breiten Öffentlichkeit bekannt wurde, gilt anerkanntermaßen Prof.
		Nicely spricht in seinem FAQ davon, dass Intel den Fehler bereits im Mai bei der Arbeit an der Gleitkommaeinheit des damals noch in Entwicklung befindlichen Pentium-Nachfolgers P6, dem späteren Pentium Pro, entdeckte.
	de.wikipedia.org /wiki/Pentium-FDIV-Bug (1092 words)

	Ooops!
		In response to the Pentium bug, PowerMac officials have announced that they will be adding the control panel "Pentium Switcher" that allows users to decide whether the PowerMac should emulate pre-Pentium or post-Pentium FDIV behaviour.
		The other user, using his computer for medical analysis ("if you were going under the knife, would you want to know that the analysis may be wrong?") says that he was put on the list for a replacement after 10 minutes of discussion with an Intel rep.
		The new problem is a bug that affects the way the Pentium BIOS interacts with the Premiere II motherboard.
	davefaq.com /Opinions/Stupid/Pentium.html (4557 words)

	Learn more about Pentium FDIV bug in the online encyclopedia. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		Learn more about Pentium FDIV bug in the online encyclopedia.
		Hint: Play with putting spaces before and after your words to see the different results you get.
		However, although most independent estimates found the bug to be of little importance and have negligible effect on most uses, it has caused a great public outcry.
	www.onlineencyclopedia.org /p/pe/pentium_fdiv_bug.html (333 words)

	Thats Nota Bug Itsa Feature
		Intel, creator of the (in)famous X86 series of processors (that have caused a revolution throughout the world), was (and is) known for hardware bugs in their devices that they would refuse to admit were there.
		Easily the most famous and severe example was the bug in their floating point divider in their first generation Pentium.
		The term "bug" is used in a cartoon from the 1950s, referring to a futuristic car whose engine "still has a few bugs".
	c2.com /cgi/wiki?ThatsNotaBugItsaFeature (939 words)

	Q&A: The Pentium FDIV Bug (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		QandA: THE PENTIUM FDIV BUG Q: How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
		Q: Complete the following word analogy: Add is to Subtract as Multiply is to: 1) Divide 2) ROUND 3) RANDOM 4) On a Pentium, all of the above A: Number 4.
		Q: According to Intel, the Pentium conforms to the IEEE standards 754 and 854 for floating point arithmetic.
	www.theprices.net /humor/computer/pentiumqa.html (182 words)

	FDIV Replacement Program
		In December of 1994, Intel announced a lifetime replacement policy on the well publicized floating point unit flaw, contained in the then current version (60-100MHz) of the Pentium® processor.
		Non-FPU flawed versions of the Pentium processor began shipping in late 1994.
		If you took delivery of your system on Jan 1, 1995 or later, it is increasingly probable that you have a processor without the flaw.
	support.intel.com /support/processors/pentium/fdiv (211 words)

	R. Smith==>Nicely P*ntium flaw e-mail
		Also he knew that Phar Lap would be interested in knowing about the bug since many of our DOS-Extender customers write just the sort of number-crunching applications that would be most affected by the FDIV bug.
		Alex's article was the first magazine article to report the FDIV bug.
		As part of his research for his article, Alex Emailed a description of the FDIV bug to Terje Mathisen of Hydro Data in Norway on November 2nd.
	www.trnicely.net /pentbug/rsmith.html (1324 words)

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