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Intel: A Bug and a Pro
The FDIV bug and release of the P6
This can be verified in compiled code, an ordinary spreadsheet such as Quattro Pro or Excel, or even the Windows calculator (use the scientific mode), by computing (824633702441.0)*(1/824633702441.0), which should equal 1 exactly (within some extremely small rounding error; in general, coprocessor results should contain 19 significant decimal digits). This little flake of silicon could be found in networking devices, laser printers, and the world’s most powerful supercomputer at the time built of two Intel Paragon XP/S 140s at Sandia National Laboratories. This notebook featured an Intel Pentium clocked at 75MHz (3.3 volt, 16K cache), 10.4” SVGA TFT-LCD, 772MB HDD, 8MB of RAM (expandable to 40MB), 2x PCMCIA, VL-bus GPU, 3.5 inch 1.44MB floppy disk drive, and it ran Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.
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