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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)
INTC 38.19+0.1%11:34 AM EST

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To: Joseph Pareti who wrote (93638)12/9/1999 12:05:00 PM
From: Jim McMannis  Read Replies (1) of 186894
 
Joe....

Oh no, not again!

theregister.co.uk

Oh no! It's Intel FDIV time again!

As if it weren't enough that you can't buy Coppermine Pentium IIIs for love
nor money, the latest list of erratanotbugs on the Intel Web site (over 60
and counting) includes one guaranteed to send a shiver down the spines
of everyone at Satan Clara:

"E56. It is possible that a negative sign bit may be incorrectly applied to
the result of an x87 floating point operation if it is closely preceded by a
Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) multiply operation...

...Implication: If this erratum occurs, the result of an x87 floating point
instruction which should be positive will instead be negative."

It is apparently possible for a BIOS mod to provide a workaround for the
bug, but at the moment, any Coppermine could be doing its sums wrong.

This is terribly embarrassing for Chipzilla, which still uses the original
Pentium FDIV (floating point divide) fault to put a scare into new recruits
and to remind employees of the inherent fallibility of man.

It's not entirely clear whether this bug applies to Katmai as well as
Coppermine cores.

The original Pentiums were made into expensive keyrings after Intel
refunded millions of dollars to users, so if you're lucky enough to have a
Coppermine, maybe those nice folks at Intel are about to refund you the
purchase price...

The URL for the site where you can download the PDF is here.

Intel adds: "Intel publishes Spec updates, listing Errata (all processors
have errata) to end users and manufacturers. This errata was identified
and a fix published some time ago." ®

---

I think I saw those P-III key rings at the checkout at CompUSA...

----

74 1/2? You're already underwater!
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