To Professor Nick Tropiano
From
07/22/2014
TB143P
The Pentium microprocessor is the CPU (central processing unit) for the widest selling personal computers. Unlike previous CPUs made by Intel, the 486DX and Pentium chips came along with a floating-point unit (FPU) also known as the math co-processor. Previous Intel CPUs did all their arithmetic using integers; programs that used floating-point numbers (non-integers like 2.5 or 3.14) needed to tell the chip how (for example) to divide them using integer arithmetic. The 486DX and Pentium chips have these instructions built into the chip, in their FPUs. This makes them much faster for intense numerical calculations, more complex, and more expensive. The problem for Intel is that all Pentiums manufactured until sometime this fall had errors in the on-chip FPU instructions for division. This caused the Pentium's FPU to incorrectly divide certain floating-point numbers.
The intel corporation didn’t handle the issue with the Pentium processor flaw well. The corporation kept brushing it off saying it was a minor defect in the processor. The flaws were technically subtle and easily overlooked. They remained silent, rationalizing to themselves that the flaws posed less threat than the subsequently proved case. Rather than solving the matter intel qualified other inflamed many Pentium end users and so they offer to replace the chip. This happened when experts participating internal discussion group proposed a number of scenarios where Intel where Intel subtle law might cause serious computation error. The cumulative effect was to raise concern among the general body of intel Pentium users. In the face of the fears, and increasingly critical coverage by the worldwide print and electronic media. On December 20, 1994, Intel decided to offer a replacement chip to all of its end-users no questions ask. And on January 17, 1994, Intel issued a press release a charge of $475 million against earning of the fourth...