On 1/6/19 11:59 AM, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk wrote:
I was a tech in the 90's when the original Pentium FDIV bug was storming.
The issue was confined to the integrated floating point portion of the
processor and was therefore rarely an issue as the vast majority of
software did not use the mathco portion of the chip. Only a handful of
applications and relative handful of users were affected. This became
Intel's position on the matter and they hoped the issue would just die
down to those handful whom they would provide new chips.
The issue did not die down and the bad press forced the decision to
replace ALL pentiums affected. Only a relative few were actually replaced
in the home and small business arena. A software patch was a common
solution to the problem. It masssaged input to the FDIV instruction to
produce a corrected result and worked pretty well as I recall.
I suspect that Intel is longing for the Pentium FDIV bug days after the
speculative execution issues that have surfaced (and gained traction) in
2018.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
