[OFFTOPIC] Re: Pentium II Math Bug

Jean-Philippe Langlois (jpl@iname.com)
Tue, 06 May 1997 12:35:09 -0400

Juhani Rautiainen wrote:
>
> On 5 May 1997, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>
> > Rob Hagopian <Rob.Hagopian@vuser.vu.union.edu> writes:
> > > Check out http://www.x86.org/ after 9:00A PST for details.
> >
> > Amazing:
> >
> > - the guy there complains about its Pentium-II which he got "before release"
> > which means that the pentium-II that will get sold will very likely be
> > different.
>
> If you really read text you might have noticed that he bought these
> processors from shop. So those processors are real production versions
> and their results also prove it. They did somewhat better than earlier in
> spring when Thomas Pabst tested those beasts.
>
>
> > - and don't go see the page about comparison between Pentium-II and K6
> > (and others) because the guy has sufficiently little knowledge in processor
> > to think that processors have to be compared at similar frequencies,
> > As if you'd an Alpha 21164 to 100Mhz in order to compare it with some POWER2
> > processor. Worse yet: the 486DX2-50 would end up being faster than the
> > 486DX-50 (since they'd be both compared at a speed of 25Mhz which the 486DX2
> > would double).
>
> Another example of how well you can read. I'm not very good at processor
> technology but those technical documents that Collins (that guy) has on
> his site seem to tell that he knows very much about x86 technology. Maybe
> even better than anyone non-NDA outside Intel (that maybe cause to why
> Intel is harrasing him.) BTW wasn't the subject Pentium II math-bug. I
> tested my PPro at work and it seems to have that bug (yihaa!!). Hopefully
> these processors aren't put to any critical places. Intel probaply will
> ahve some hardtimes ahead. First they make other processor to do be
> slower than MMX-ones in Adobe photoshop and now another dreaded processor
> bug (if pentium one hadn't been enough).
>
> --
> Juhani Rautianen jrauti@iki.fi

What about the machine the army is supposed to use for nuclear explosion
simulation based on thousands of PPRO CPUs?... gees, makes you wonder if
they're gonna blow up the planet because of a PPRO bug... I know it's
off topic but I couldn't resist!