Pentium Flaw

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    Unit 5 Analysis 1: Pentium Flaw

    media came out with a story that one of Intel’s Pentium microprocessors had a floating point unit flaw (FPU). This flaw had to do with a math calculation that gave out wrong number after you put in an equation. The story about this flaw came to light after Professor by the name of Thomas Nicely, who was a mathematics professor at Lynchburg collage. Nicely was trying to compute the sum of a reciprocal of a large group of prime numbers on his Pentium based computer. When he checked the results they

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    Pentium Flaw

    manufacturer in the world. In 1993 Intel introduced the Pentium series CPU. The Pentium architecture became the most successful processor of all time. As successful as the Pentium was it had issues. Most can and could not be seen by the typical user but in 1994 it had a flaw that was noticed by a mathematician from Lynchburg collage in West Virginia by the name of Thomas Nicely while doing some calculations on his PC. The Pentium flaw was the flaw in the Float-point unit would cause incorrect answers

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    Pentium Flaw

    Unit 5 Analysis 1: Pentium Flaw Intel Corporation discovered a design flaw in June of 1994 in its flagship Pentium Processor. For divisions involving a few specific numbers, the chip's floating point unit gave the wrong answer. Intel's tests showed that the error only appeared in the ninth significant digit of the answer and affected only a minuscule percentage of the possible division combinations. Intel did not handle the problem correctly, they consider the flaw to be “minor” .They said that

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    Pentium Flaw

    Pentium Flaw The nature of the Pentium flaw is a floating point unit (FPU) First discovered by Thomas Nicely on June 13, 1994 after adding a 486- OX4s system. Nicely a professor of mathematics at Lynchburg College in Virginia noticed inconsistencies in his calculations. Nicely had written a code to enumerate primes, twin primes, prime triplets, and prime quadruplets when he noticed the inconsistences; Nicely reported it to Intel and sent out several emails out asking if anyone else had experienced

    Words: 434 - Pages: 2

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    Pentium Flaw

    Pentium Flaw The nature of the Pentium flaw was a “bug” that the processor could return incorrect decimal results which made this hard to calculate and get the correct answer. This affected the fields in mathematics and science where they have to deal with a lot of math. The flaw was discovered first by Intel but they did not act on the problem, but a professor from Lynchburg College, Virginia called Dr. Thomas R. Nicely discovered the problem around June 1994 he was the one that noticed it in two

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    Pentium Flaw

    Unit 5 Analysis 1 : Pentium Flaw The Pentium microprocessor is the CPU (central processing unit) for the widest selling personal computers. Unlike previous CPUs made by Intel, the 486DX and Pentium chips came along with a floating-point unit (FPU) also known as the math co-processor. Previous Intel CPUs did all their arithmetic using integers; programs that used floating-point numbers (non-integers like 2.5 or 3.14) needed to tell the chip how (for example) to divide them using integer arithmetic

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    Pentium Flaw

    Shawn Kersh NT1110 July 20, 2015 PENTIUM FLAW The Pentium Flaw occurred when Intel’s Pentium CPU’s 3.1 million transistors performed division incorrectly. The problem was not only realized by Intel’s engineers after the release of the product in 1993, but it was also discovered by a mathematician at Lynchburg College in West Virginia by the name of Thomas Nicely. When the problem was discovered and brought to the attention of then CEO, Andy Grove, he resisted ideas to recall the product

    Words: 436 - Pages: 2

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    The Pentium Flaw

    The Pentium Flaw The Pentium Flaw is a prime example of what happens when a company ignores the users they sell their product to. The Flaw was in the 486DX processor chip, with the Floating point unit. The error in the unit would occur very rarely, when dividing non-integers. Intel’s testers knew of this issue before it was released, but they decided not to tell anyone outside of the company, this was their first and largest mistake. After the release of the chip, it was several months before

    Words: 477 - Pages: 2

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    Pentium Flaw

    Pentium Flaw In 1994 it was discovered by Tim Coe of Vitesse Semiconductors, that there was a flaw with the Pentium chips & the 486DX that included a floating point unit (FPU). Intel’s FPU was built into the processing chip which did increase its computing speed, but it had errors on its instructions for division. When brought to Intel’s attention by math professor Thomas Nicely, Intel’s response was non chalant. Someone took his phone call, did the calculations with him & proved Mr. Nicely correct

    Words: 368 - Pages: 2

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    Pentium Flaw

    Rodolfo Ybarra Mr. Cunningham Pentium Flaw essay Intel’s greatest mistake was the so-called “Pentium flaw,”. 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. Mathematician Thomas Nicely of Lynchburg College in West Virginia also discovered the flaw. He didn’t want to recall the product. But when IBM announced it would not ship computers with the CPU, it forced a recall that cost Intel $475 million

    Words: 262 - Pages: 2

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