Subject: PENTIUM FIX(?)

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 09:11:04 -0500

IN THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER LAST WEEK AN ARTICLE POINTED OUT THAT THERE WERE
2,000,000 PENTIUM CHIPS THAT ARE BUGGY.  THE ARTICLE POINTS OUT THAT MathWorks
OF NATICK, MASS. WILL RELEASE A "FIX" TODAY.  DOES ANYBODY KNOW ABOUT IT?
CLEVE MOLER(OF MATHwORKS), ARE YOU LISTENING?

INTERUPTION...PHONE CALL FROM INTEL...THE LOCAL OFFICE HERE IN ROCHESTER IS
AWARE THAT INTENSIVE USERS ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO HAVE A PROBLEM, THOUGH THEY
CLAIM OF STILL SMALL PROBABILITY.  THEY ARE SERIOUS ABOUT CORRECTING THE
PROBLEM
FOR THOSE WHO INSIST....NO FLAMES TO ME PLEASE.  INTEL:1-800-628-8686.

REGARDS.....

-- 

John M. McKelvey			email: [email-masked]
Computational Science Laboratory	phone: (716) 477-3335
2nd Floor, Bldg 83, RL
Eastman Kodak Company			
Rochester, NY 14650-2216

--

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From: Charles Letner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 11:03:00 -0800 (PST)

Hello all,
	For those who are following this "story" I was able to verify the
problem using the windows calculator (as was mentioned by another user
last week).  It is a easy check...

> FOR THOSE WHO INSIST....NO FLAMES TO ME PLEASE.  INTEL:1-800-628-8686.

	I tried Intel tech support this morning.  They do not sound very
interested in correcting the problem to me.  8v(  Basically the response
was let me send you a fax.  We can talk more if you actually run a
application and have the problem.  Interesting that they will decide if
they think you have a problem.  I felt like they where "blowing me off". 
You can make what you want of the fax.  I've included a copy of the
fax below so you can draw your own conclusions.

Best regards,
Chuck

Charles Letner
Wright State University
Department of Biochemistry
Dayton, OH 45435
e-mail: [email-masked]

FAX from intel corperation from 11/28/94 (scanned in and converted to
text some errors in actual characters may be present. I found most of them
I think.

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INTEL INFORMATION ON THE SUBTLE FLAW OF THE FLOATING POINT UNIT OF
THE PENTIUM(TM) PROCESSOR

There has been a lot of communication recently on the Internet about a
floating point flaw on the Pentium(TM) processor. For almost all users,
this is not a problem. Here are the facts. Intel detected a subtle flaw in
the precision of the divide operation for the Pentium Processor. For rare
cases (one in nine billion possible divides), the precision of the result
is reduced. Intel discovered this subtle flaw during ongoing testing --
after several trillions of floating point operations in our continuing
testing of the Pentium processor. Intel immediately tested the most
stringent technical applications that use the floating point unit over the
course of months and we have been unable to detect any error. In fact,
after extensive testing and shipping millions of Pentium processor-based
systems, there has only been one reported instance of this flaw affecting
a user, to our knowledge. In this case, a mathematician doing theoretical
analysis of prime numbers and reciprocals saw reduced precision at the 9th
place to the right of the decimal. In fact, extensive engineering tests
demonstrated that an average spreadsheet user could encounter this subtle
flaw of reduced precision once in every 27,000 years of use. Based on
these empirical observations and our extensive testing, the user of
standard off-the-shelf software will not be impacted. If you do this kind
of prime numbers generation or other complex mathematics, call
1-800-628-8686 (International 916-356-3551). If you don't, you won't
encounter any problems with your Pentium processor-based system. If ever
in the life of the computer this becomes a problem, Intel will work with
the customer to resolve the issue

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From: [email-masked] (Zdenko Tomasic)
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 94 13:03:17 CST

I doubt that Cleve reads this list, but he has offerred a software
workaround (actually improvement) which however is cannot recover full
IEEE complience (error in no more than 1 ulp).

Here is his message from netnews (read comp.sys.intel for more):