Nt1110 Unit 5 Analysis Essay
Phaedra Rosengarth
10/20/14
NT1110
Unit 5 Analysis 1: Pentium Flaw
The nature of the Pentium flaw was in the floating – point math subsection. In certain conditions, low order bits of the result of floating-point division operations would be incorrect. This would lead to an error that will quickly compound in operations to larger errors when future calculations were completed. The flaw was first discovered in June 1994, when Intel engineers first noticed that the floating-point unit (FPU) on the chip gave the wrong answer. However future tests done by Intel showed that the error appeared only in the ninth significant digit of the answer and affected a very, very small percentage of possible division combinations. The results of this flaw
10/20/14
NT1110
Unit 5 Analysis 1: Pentium Flaw
The nature of the Pentium flaw was in the floating – point math subsection. In certain conditions, low order bits of the result of floating-point division operations would be incorrect. This would lead to an error that will quickly compound in operations to larger errors when future calculations were completed. The flaw was first discovered in June 1994, when Intel engineers first noticed that the floating-point unit (FPU) on the chip gave the wrong answer. However future tests done by Intel showed that the error appeared only in the ninth significant digit of the answer and affected a very, very small percentage of possible division combinations. The results of this flaw