Unit 5 research paper
Intel is the reason for the Pentium flaw. First of all the flaw is about a floating point unit
(FPU) which is a microprocessor inside the CPU. This basically helps the computer figure out
more complex mathematic problems. This flaw made huge mathematical problems come out
wrong by a little less than a hundred, but most people probably wouldn’t notice it.
The flaw was discovered by a math professor in 1994 and he attempted to bring it to
Intel’s attention. When they did not want to listen he spread it to the public over internet. They
way Intel handled the flaw was wrong they shouldn’t of made people have to prove why they
would need to do complex math problems in order to get a new unflawed chip. “Intel publicly
announced that an error is only likely to occur [about] once in nine billion random floating point
divides", and that "an average spreadsheet user could encounter this subtle flaw once in every
27,000 years of use.”
After they had admitted they were wrong in November and made people prove why they
would need a new chip, they decided in December to replace they chip for anyone who asked.
If the same type of flaw were to happen today I think that more people would notice it because
of how much we have advanced from 1994 to today with probably way more complex math
problems than back then.
Worst of all is that Intel knew all about this flaw but told no one. They kept it a secret
which I don’t agree with. The right thing would have been to fix the flaw before letting it go any
farther. Intel is still a huge and successful company today so it obviously didn’t affect them that
(FPU) which is a microprocessor inside the CPU. This basically helps the computer figure out
more complex mathematic problems. This flaw made huge mathematical problems come out
wrong by a little less than a hundred, but most people probably wouldn’t notice it.
The flaw was discovered by a math professor in 1994 and he attempted to bring it to
Intel’s attention. When they did not want to listen he spread it to the public over internet. They
way Intel handled the flaw was wrong they shouldn’t of made people have to prove why they
would need to do complex math problems in order to get a new unflawed chip. “Intel publicly
announced that an error is only likely to occur [about] once in nine billion random floating point
divides", and that "an average spreadsheet user could encounter this subtle flaw once in every
27,000 years of use.”
After they had admitted they were wrong in November and made people prove why they
would need a new chip, they decided in December to replace they chip for anyone who asked.
If the same type of flaw were to happen today I think that more people would notice it because
of how much we have advanced from 1994 to today with probably way more complex math
problems than back then.
Worst of all is that Intel knew all about this flaw but told no one. They kept it a secret
which I don’t agree with. The right thing would have been to fix the flaw before letting it go any
farther. Intel is still a huge and successful company today so it obviously didn’t affect them that