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Thomas Nicely reports a bug in Intel's Pentium processor on the internet

The Pentium FDIV bug is a hardware bug affecting the floating-point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium processors.

The Pentium FDIV bug is a hardware bug affecting the floating-point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium processors. Because of the bug, the processor would return incorrect binary floating point results when dividing certain pairs of high-precision numbers. The bug was discovered in 1994 by Thomas R. Nicely, a professor of mathematics at Lynchburg College. Missing values in a lookup table used by the FPU's floating-point division algorithm led to calculations acquiring small errors. In certain circumstances the errors can occur frequently and lead to significant deviations.

The severity of the FDIV bug is debated.

Historical Significance

The Pentium FDIV bug is a hardware bug affecting the floating-point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium processors.

Key People

Andrew Grove

–

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Frequently Asked Questions

What happened on October 30, 1994?
The Pentium FDIV bug is a hardware bug affecting the floating-point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium processors. Because of the bug, the processor would return incorrect binary floating point results when dividing certain pairs of high-precision numbers. The bug was discovered in 1994 by Thomas R.
Why is Thomas Nicely reports a bug in Intel's Pentium processor on the internet significant?
The Pentium FDIV bug is a hardware bug affecting the floating-point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium processors.
Who was involved in Thomas Nicely reports a bug in Intel's Pentium processor on the internet?
Key figures include Andrew Grove.

Explore More

October 30 in HistoryYear 1994