...Unit 5 Analysis- Pentium Flaw NT1110 February 11, 2015 Instructor Sheila Pearson The Pentium flaw was when a segment among the Pentium CPU’s transistors performed division incorrectly. Engineers for Intel discovered the problem after the product was released in 1993 but they kept it hush hush and decided to fix the problem by using updates to the chip. A mathematician by the name of Thomas Nicely that worked for Lynchburg College in West Virginia also discovered the flaw. At first Grove, who was the CEO of Intel at the time, did not want to recall the product but when IBM got involved and made the announcement that they would not sell any computers that used that CPU chip, it forced Intel to do a recall that cost them about $475 million. In the beginning by keeping it quiet they were doing the wrong thing by trying to deceive the customer. By doing that they could have lost a lot of business from customers who might have felt that they were not trustworthy and were knowingly selling faulty products. But in the end they did the right thing and recalled the chips with the flaws in it which is the right thing to do. They decided to replace all flawed processors upon request and put aside a 420 million dollar budget to do so. They also hired hundreds of employees to specifically deal with customer requests. They placed four fulltime employees to read Internet newsgroups and respond to any and every question or remark about Intel’s products. If this same flaw was to happen today...
Words: 356 - Pages: 2
...Pentium Flaw The Pentium flaw was a bug within the Pentium CPU’s 3.1 million transistors that caused the transistors to perform division incorrectly. Intel’s engineers discovered the flaw after the product’s release in 1993 but chose to keep silent and attempt to correct the flaw in future updates to the processor chip. The flaw was discovered in 1994 by American mathematician Thomas Nicely. Nicely was using a personal computer equipped with Intel’s Pentium chip when he discovered a flaw in the chip that was producing inconsistent results in his calculations of Brun’s constant. Nicely informed Intel of the flaw, but after receiving no response he posted his finding on the internet. News of the bug spread quickly on the internet and then to the industry press. Intel’s statement that the bug was minor was not accepted by many computer users. After a spotlight of the flaw ran by The New York Times, Intel changed its postion and offered to replace every chip. Only a fraction of Pentium users bothered to have their chips replaced. I believe Intel handled the situation in a professional manner and gave customers reasonable options to have their chips replaced. I do not think the flaw in the chip affected most customers and had little effect to the common user. If the flaw was a major problem more people would have had issues and more chips would have been replaced. Intel did everything necessary to satisfy their customers. I believe if the same situation was to occur today...
Words: 305 - Pages: 2
...Intel’s famed technical prowess was not without mishaps. Its 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. Company engineers discovered the problem after the product’s release in 1993 but decided to keep quiet and fix the problem in updates to the chip. However, 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 in his calculations of Brun’s constant. Negative publicity from the mathematics community led Intel to offer free replacement chips that cost them millions of dollars in revenue. My analysis of the way the Intel Corporation handled the Pentium flaw of the 90's was irresponsible. They seemed to basically dismiss that there would be noticeable problems that could affect the user with their computer. Although in most cases this assumption is correct, it still shows a great deal of dishonestly from the company because it seemed as if Intel tried to cover it up. I feel that Intel was lazy and simply not willing to fix the problem that they created due to cost concerns. If I were to sell a bicycle to someone knowing the breaks were faulty, causing occasional break failure, I think people would be pretty upset and I would most likely be sued for sub sequential harm caused. On December 20, 1994,...
Words: 371 - Pages: 2
...Pentium Flaw The Pentium Microprocessor is the widest selling personal computers on the market. Intel created the 486DX and the Pentium chip that included Floating point unit (FPU). This FPU was known as a math co-processor. The problem arose in the fall of 1994, all the new Pentium chips were manufactured with an error in the FPU system. This error was in the FPU instructions for the division. This caused the chip to divide certain numbers incorrectly. Intel engineers discovered a flaw in the floating-point math subsection of the Pentium processor. But instead of assessing this problem they simply ignored it and thought that the customers would not ever notice the flaw. Thomas Nicely discovered this problem also when he was computing the sum of large reciprocals of prime numbers on his Pentium base computer. Later on Thomas emailed Intel and told them that there was a flaw in the co-processor. Intel never responded back so he took it to his own hands and posted the flaw online, asking other people to check for the flaw also on other users computers. Many people responded back and the news got involved sooner or later Intel started receiving more and more emails about the flaw. A common Known error was 4195825/3145727 dividing those numbers gave an incorrect answer to the problem. Intel’s response to this flaw was to replace Pentium chip microprocessor to whoever could explain the flaw to them. This angered man of the customers so Intel responded by replacing them...
Words: 410 - Pages: 2
...Pentium Flaw The Pentium microprocessor flaw was basically that the CPU didn’t know how to do arithmetic or math calculations, so it failed at calculating any type of math. The Pentium flaw was found in the summer/fall of 1994 by Thomas Nicely according to Mark Janeba from the article I read. Mark Janeba stated that Thomas Nicely was a math professor at Lynchburg College and that Thomas was computing the sum of the reciprocals of a large collection of prime numbers on his Pentium-based computer. That’s when the problem started showing up, the CPU gave Thomas different results from his theoretical values so Thomas did the same problem on a different computer, the computer gave Thomas the same answer he got theoretically. He finally tracked the problem to the Pentium chip itself. According to the article by Mark Janeba, Intel admitted the problem publically around November of 1994. Intel was going to replace the Pentium chips but only for the people that could explain their need for complicated calculations. In the end of December Intel stated that a free replacement Pentium CPU would be given for anyone that asks for one. Basically Intel was going to do a total recall, replacement and they were going to destroy any of the flawed Pentium microprocessors. I honestly don’t think Intel handled the problem very well because at first they ignored it and said that it wasn’t happening to every Pentium CPU but people were saying that the Pentium CPU was not giving them the right answers...
Words: 452 - Pages: 2
...Tiffany M Shamlee Unit 5 Analysis 1 NT1110 Pentium Flaw The Pentium flaw was discovered where the division result returned by the Pentium microprocessor was off by about sixty-one parts per million. When Intel discovered the flaw, their solution was to keep the information within the company. They did not want to disclose any of the information to the public, because of the negative publicity it would bring to the company. The flaw did not affect all microprocessors, only a very small number of customers. I feel that Intel should have openly acknowledged the problem despite the small number of customers affected. Intel determined if customers were affected by the flaw when they called in to report a problem. They did this by inputting a certain code into their system. Once they identified the problem, Intel would then implement a solution. However, if feel if Intel had openly accepted and informed the clients about the issue, it would have most likely saved them money. Their reputation between the company and their existing clients would have also been protected. Intel’s decision and way of handling the flaw caused a lot of their customers to be very unhappy. If this type of flaw was to be found in a new CPU today, the company would surely fail. With a problem in the floating-point math subsection with an error of approximately sixty-one parts per million, this would cause too many problems for the clients today. Especially considering that Intel declined...
Words: 310 - Pages: 2
...Marcos Corpas 1/18/2016 NT1110 Unit 5 Analysis 1: Pentium Flaw The Pentium processor flaw was a flaw in the floating-point math subsection of the Pentium microprocessor. When certain conditions were met low order bits of the result of floating-point division operations would be incorrect, an error that can quickly compound in floating-point operations to much larger errors in subsequent calculations. Intel corrected the problem in a future revision, but they refused to disclose it. The mathematics professor at Lynchburg College who discovered the flaw was Dr. Thomas Nicely. Dr. Nicely then had an inquiry with Intel and upon not receiving any response from them he posted about the flaw on October 30th 1994 online. Word quickly spread of the flaw and Intel responded by saying that the bug was minor and “not even an erratum”. Since the bug was easy to replicate by the average user, Intel's response about the bug was not accepted by many computer users. When New York Times Journalist John Markoff ran a piece that spotlighted the error, Intel in response to the media coverage changed its position on the matter and offered to replace every faulty chip. Intel put in place a large end-user support organization. This resulted in a five hundred million dollar charge against Intel's 1994 revenue. Interestingly enough, the attention paid to the Intel Pentium Processor Flaw made Intel go from a seemingly unknown computer supplier to a regular household name. The incident is considered by...
Words: 482 - Pages: 2
...College discovered a flaw with the new Intel Pentium processor while he was trying to perform calculations. He had noticed that the answers to his calculations were coming back wrong. One example of the flaw was found where the division result returned by the Pentium was off by about 61 parts per million. He initially contacted Intel in which he would find out later that they were aware that there was a problem. At first Intel denied there being a problem but after several reports they said that there was a problem but it was so minor that most computer users wouldn’t notice it. Intel then told its customers that if they could prove that they received a defective chip then they would replace it for free. IBM, who used the Pentium in their computers, cancelled their sales of their computers that had the flawed chip. But finally after a lot of negative press and decreasing sales, Intel finally decided to replace all the flawed chips. It seems to me that at first Intel did a horrible job of addressing the issue. Ii seemed as if they wanted to hide the problem because they didn’t want it to affect their profit margins. It also seemed that they were worried about losing their customer base over the issue. But in the end they seemed to have admitted their fault and tried to do the right thing and replace the defective chips. I would hope and imagine that any company, including Intel, would try to be more proactive in the future if they were to encounter any flaws in their products....
Words: 302 - Pages: 2
...Back in the day there was a thing called the Pentium processor flaw which like it states was a flaw in the floating-point math section of the Pentium microprocessor. When thing happened in a certain way the floating-point division operations would be incorrect, with this an error can quickly form in floating-point operations to much larger errors in other calculations. Intel did eventually fix the issue with patches and revisions but never stated the problem directly. At Lynchburg College A mathematics professor was the one who discovered the flaw goes by the name Dr. Thomas Nicely. Once he discover the problem he went to Intel to inform them but to no avail they never responded so he went public with the info in 1944 posting his findings online. Due to the power of the internet ears all over the world heard of the flaw and they responded by saying it wasn't a big deal and “not even an erratum”. To some people that was not except able since the error occurred quite easily the average Joe could reproduce it. Once the story was published by a New York time Journalist named John Markoff it really put the pressure on Intel. They did a good 180 flip and offer to replace every faulty chip in response to the media blowing it up in there face. As a result Intel was hit with a multi million dollar charge to there 1994 revenue after creating an organization to help their users. In the end even bad publicity is still good publicity. They became a household name and even with this mishap...
Words: 465 - Pages: 2
...INTEL Knows Best? A Major Marketing Mistake Problem Statement When Thomas Nicely, a mathematician at Lynchburg College in Virginia, first went public with the fact that Intel's new Pentium chip was defective Intel admitted to the fact that it had sold millions of defective chips, and had known about the defective chips for over four months. Intel said its reasoning for not going public was that most people would never encounter any problems with the chip. Intel said that a spreadsheet user doing random calculations would only have a problem every 27,000 years, therefore they saw no reason to replace all of the defective chips. However if a user possessed a defective chip and could convince Intel that his or her calculations were particularly vulnerable to the flaw in the defective chip then Intel it would supply those people with a new chip. This attitude of 'father knows best' fostered by Intel created an uproar among users and owners of the defective chips. Six weeks after Mr. Nicely went public, IBM, a major purchaser of Pentium chips, stopped all shipments of computers containing the defective Pentium chips. Intel's stock dropped 5% following this bold move by IBM. IBM's main contention was that it puts its customers first, and Intel was failing to do this. Intel's handling of this defective chip situation gives rise to many questions. During the course of this paper I will address several of them. The first of which is how did a company with such a...
Words: 1761 - Pages: 8
...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 instructions for division. This cased the Floating-point unit to divide certain floating-point numbers incorrectly. This Pentium flaw was most know from an equation solved by Tim Coe of Vitesse Semiconductors. The number he tried to divide was 4195835 by 3145727. The value that was outputted by the computer was incorrect by 0.006%. Thomas Nicely, a math professor at Lynchburg College was computing the sum of the reciprocals of a large collection of prime numbers on one of Intel’s Pentium-based computers. He calculated the same equation on a different program and then traced the problem back to the Pentium itself. Nicely contacted Intel and didn’t get any real response to the problem. He then posted on the Internet asking others to confirm the problem he had found. Nicely was interviewed with a magazine and CNN aired a story about by his findings. After Nicely’s findings, Intel publicly announced “an error is only likely to occur [about] once in nine billion random floating...
Words: 462 - Pages: 2
...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 for the flaw on the 486-DX4s, and the Pentium clones. The flaw in in the Pentium floating point unit was verified and became known as the FDIV bug. The issue was a mathematical problem in the Floating Point (FPU), the math coprocessor. The Pentium chip had glitches when calculation large divisions. Testing on the 486 pin pointed the error to the Pentium Chip. Intel confirmed the error but said they had no other reports of it. Intel the considered the flaw as a minor problem and did not let the industry know about the flaw. However word of the flaw got out through the internet and articles and Intel started getting negative publicly. Intel handled did not handle the problem with the flaw correctly. By considering the flaw minor to avoid fixing the problem and negative publicly, Intel showed poor judgment and integrity as a company. Intel only attempted to fix the flaw after receiving negative publicly. To satisfy customers concerned about the flaw Intel fix the problem...
Words: 353 - Pages: 2
...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 Nicely from Lynchburg College, posted his findings on the internet on October 30, 1994. Nicely quoted that “he was computing the sum of the reciprocals of a large collection of prime numbers on his Pentium-based computer and found the error. Checking his computation, he found the result differed significantly from theoretical values. He got correct results by running the same program on a computer with a 486 CPU, and finally he tracked the error to the Pentium itself” (Janeba.Mark.The Pentium Problem.1995). News of calculations error spread like a wildfire. Intel publicly announced that "an error is only likely to occur [about] once in nine billion random floating point divide situations”. This did not sit very well with companies and individuals alike. The Food and Drug Administration stated its concerns for the drug-testing data that had been produced using the Pentium processor. They did not tell the companies to redo all their testing, but firmly represented hesitation in...
Words: 674 - Pages: 3
...Research Paper Factory Join Search Browse Saved Papers 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 the company and not disclose the information to the public. Regardless of the fact that the flaw did not affect all microprocessors, it actually only affected a very small number of customers, Intel should have openly acknowledged the problem. When customers would call into Intel with issues concerning the flaw, Intel would input a certain code into it in order to verify that was in fact the problem. Once the problem was identified, Intel then would implement a solution. However, if Intel had openly accepted and informed the clients about the issue, it most likely would have saved them not only money but also their reputation between the company and their existing clients. Needless to say, their decision resulted in some very unhappy customers. If this same type of flaw was to be found in a new CPU today, the company would surely fail. With a problem in the floating-point math subsection with an error...
Words: 307 - Pages: 2
...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 around the world who had access to the Internet found this out. The diversion result from Pentium was off by sixty-one parts per million. Intel then was forced to tell people about this hiccup but said that it was of little importance and that it wouldn’t affect most people in a big way. Even though this was most likely true it made everyone feel like they messed up and nobody wants something that doesn’t work how it’s supposed to even if it’s off a little. Intel then felt the need to tell customers that if their Pentium chip was flawed in any way they would replace it with Pentium chips that were flawless. Not a lot of people even bothered to replace their chips at all. In, 1995 Intel had to pay $475 million because of the flawed processors. My opinion on the “Pentium Flaw” is that it is a complete outrage. Everyone always wants the best of the best and if it has a flaw people tend to keep away from it. If the new IPhone came out the same day as the new Galaxy S3 and there...
Words: 420 - Pages: 2
