ABSTRACT
Intel's Pentium chip, launched in March 1993, enabled a computer to run 400 times faster than the original IBM PC of 12 years previously. However, Professor Thomas Nicely, a mathematician at Lynchburg College in Virginia, found that the Pentium's special mathematics could make mistakes. When dividing by certain long numbers, particularly those above 824 billion and those with nine or more digits after the decimal point, it would get the first eight or so digits of the answer right, but then add the rest more or less at random. The media headlines tell what happened next: 'Chips fault raises worldwide fears of computer errors'; 'Calculators that can't do their sums properly'; 'Intel to replace millions of faulty chips'; 'Intel fights to recover from Pentium fiasco'; 'Chips are down at Intel as IBM pulls plug on flawed Pentiums'; 'How not to manage a crisis'; 'Fuzzy Logic'; and 'Intel foots £310m Pentium bill'.
