IEEE Computational Science and Engineering · 1995 · 26 citations · 0 references
EngineeringComputer EngineeringComputer ScienceAlgorithmsComputer ArchitectureMicroelectronicsComputational ComplexityHardware AccelerationInstruction Set ArchitectureProcessor Core DesignProcessor MicroarchitectureComputational PrecisionDivision AlgorithmsFixed-point ArithmeticFloating-point ArithmeticFloating-point InstructionsFloating-point Unit Design
The Pentium affair has been widely publicized. It started with an obscure defect in the floating-point unit of Intel Corporation's flagship Pentium microprocessor. This is the story of how the Pentium floating-point division problem was discovered, and what you need to know about the maths and computer engineering involved before deciding whether to replace the chip, install the workaround provided here, or do nothing. The paper also discusses broader issues of computational correctness.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>