SMRTR TechDec 11, 2024Hacker News

Ken Shirriff Tracks Down Intel's Infamous Pentium FDIV Bug in the Silicon Itself

SMRTR summary

Intel's 1993 Pentium processor had a flaw called the FDIV bug, causing incorrect floating-point division results. Costing $475 million in replacements, reverse engineer Ken Shirriff traced the issue to errors in a 2048-entry table for the SRT division algorithm. He found 16 missing entries, more than the five previously known, indicating a mathematical error in table construction rather than Intel's claimed script download issue.

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