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tolien.bsky.social
@tolien.bsky.social
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Intel launched the Pentium processor in 1993. Unfortunately, dividing sometimes gave a slightly wrong answer, the famous FDIV bug. Replacing the faulty chips cost Intel $475 million. I reverse-engineered the circuitry and can explain the bug. 1/9
A die photo of the Pentium processor with the main functional blocks labeled including the caches, instruction fetch and decode, integer execution, and floating point. The image consists of complex patterns of rectangular regions in reddish and brownish colors. The image zooms in on a small part of the floating point unit giving a detail of an adder and PLA circuit.
December 6, 2024 at 4:48 PM