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SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1997 MAY 12 (NB) -- REPEAT/By Patrick
McKenna. Intel Corp. [NASDAQ:INTC] formally confirmed an erratum or
what is commonly known as bug, called "flag." Intel says the flag
erratum can be handled immediately with a software "workaround" and
future designs will eliminate the problem
Originally, published by Intel watcher, Robert Collins, and called
"Dan-0411," the bug can cause certain applications to deviate from
published specifications. bug occurred during overflow (when a number is
too large to be stored in a microprocessor) condition involving float-
point addition when an operand is stored as an integer.
Intel also confirmed other reports which said flag erratum does not
affect standard Pentiums and Pentiums with MMX technology.
Id Software's technical director, John Carmack, stated the bug more
simply, saying, "As I understand it, the Pentium Pro processor and
Pentium II processor erratum manifests when storing 80-bit values, which
almost nobody ever uses."
Baan Americas, Microsoft, Computer Associates, Corel, SCO, Oracle and
other major software companies came to Intel's support, a message posted
at Intel's Web site said. They all confirmed the flag erratum does not
affect their product and promised continued investigations. Paul Maritz,
a Microsoft vice president, said, "After initial investigation we
believe our core operating systems and applications are unaffected by
this processor erratum."
Intel spokesperson Howard High, told Newsbytes, "We are confirming the
erratum first published as Dan-0411 by Collins. We have found the extent
of the flag erratum to be larger than first expected, but we believe few
users will be affected by this erratum."
As part of a "go public" with bugs program developed after a 1994 bug
revelation, Intel published a response on the company's World Wide Web
site (at intel.com ). The flag erratum is
number 62 on the Pentium Pro list and number 25 on the Pentium II errata
list. Intel also provides information at 800-628-8686. |
