Intel's Pentium FDIV Bug Led to $475 Million Recall
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🧮 Intel’s Pentium FDIV Bug: A Major Misstep in Computing History. In 1993, Intel launched the Pentium processor, which soon faced backlash due to a critical floating-point division error known as the FDIV bug. Initially dismissed as minor, the issue gained media attention after Professor Nicely discovered inaccuracies in calculations, leading to widespread criticism and a costly recall that cost Intel $475 million. The bug stemmed from a flawed lookup table in the processor’s division algorithm, where 16 entries were incorrectly omitted. Despite the rarity of the error—occurring in about 1 in 9 billion operations—the fallout prompted Intel to replace all faulty chips, highlighting the importance of accuracy in computing and the potential impact of processor errors on user trust.
