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30 years after: A Retrospective into Intel’s infamous
30 years after: A Retrospective into Intel’s infamous Pentium FDIV Bug [Colani Restoration Pt. 4]
#years #Retrospective #Intels #infamous
“THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR”
6 million flawed Pentium CPU, 10 Lawsuits, 475M US$ in direct cost, a stocks value drop, huge media backlash and all in between, Intel, a company in denial: When Prof. Thomas R. Nicely uncovered the Pentium FDIV bug in 1994, it quickly turned out to become one the biggest PR disasters of all…
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I've questioned the veracity of the Quake story because FDIV bug was public knowledge in the news media by the time Abrash came along to work on the Quake software renderer.
30 years later, it is interesting to see where Intel is today.
14th-gen processors that are little different than 13th-gen, and they still consume way too much power. And so many Efficient Cores (E-Cores) , while AMD Ryzen are using all Performance Cores, and at much lower wattage.
Intel is in a tough spot in today's market. AMD is wicked competition. And the consumers benefit!
It's worth more as a collector's item than even if Intel replaced it with a modern CPU for you. Most of them were replaced back in the day, and Intel is known to have destroyed the ones sent back to them. So a flawed FDIV P5 Pentium is a rarity now.
If anyone ever tells you that computers don't make mistakes, bring this up!
There was an old joke. Do you know why is Pentium faster than 486? Because 486 is slowly calculating, while Pentium is guessing.
What if the FDIV bug is actually not a bug but the first time a FPU was correct and every other CPU has a flaw? Hmmm…
I remember a fellow on Usenet showing how the FDIV bug screwed up his data and sent him on a goose chase trying to figure out which of the tens of thousands of data points he had entered was wrong and throwing the results off. I remember him saying something like, "Thank you, Intel, for wasting a week of my academic career."
Motorola 68060 not 68080 there is no 68080 (there is a fpga emulated crappy solution that they CALL 68080 that is a different thing)
A flawed P5 is of course a keeper.
A lot of the P54C chips with the bug ended up in promotional keychains, encased in clear plastic.
I had the issue show up as a kid. Pc was for my dad and myself. I told him about the issue and he told his work.
Ever since I've only bought AMD CPUs.
The P54C 90Mhz also had the FDIV bug. From my faded memory the 90Mhz seemed to be the big seller for desktops.
68080 wasn't designed by Motorola. 68060 was the last 68K CPU designed by Motorola.
I honestly want to see if Intel still honors it
there is an old DOS nes emulator (theone with bleeding hand icon) that has a copu bug test and it locks up your machine if youre on this cpu!
*oh, your CPU is gaslighting you?
you know Apple would try to pass this off as a feature, not a bug, somehow… in just 324928349827 words or less.
Steven have a ibm computer with the same processor fault. He is in his collection. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
auf alle Fälle behalten
Obviously keep a part of history. This is the most known cpu bug of all time. I wish you could have tried to demonstrate and replicate a bugged calculation. I can't imagine intel has any stock, but it would be amusing to call up and see what they offer.
I have several early Pentium machines, but only one with the FDIV bug. I'm very happy to have one and I will certainly be keeping it.
I have a Pentium 60 and 66, both with the FDIV bug. I upgraded the 66 to the Pentium OverDrive 133, but I'm saving the flawed CPUs for posterity.
The story behind naming scheme change is interesting as well. I mean why Pentium is not just 586. BTW Best solution for the problem is: POD5V133 😉
You would like to try NextStep for x86 with this flawed CPU installed. Is known NS Display Postscript display server makes heavy use of the FP unit, and the bug can manifest as visual raster glitches.
That is a beautiful tower
SPECTRE is considered a fundamental flaw in speculative execution. It could very well be one of the most important computer science discoveries in recent years.
I had a P100 with this bug. I didnt notice it. Only 1 game I had crashed sometimes. It was Screamer. Replacing the CPU to a 133 MHz one solved the issue.
I can still remember the outrage! I was at a bank, and everyone was up in arms as the potential that excel+pentium could be losing us untold amounts of money was far too dangerous! There was patches to disable the FPU and of course people cried as their speedy and expensive pentiums were now terrible. There was an actual scramble for 486 DX machines lol
Also Intel didnt think to much about the branding and why they avoided the next letter, instead opting for 'Pentium PRO' then Pentium II….