Anyone reading this started back in the Pentium days? Those were the good old days.
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@js " I also remember the 25th anniversary party at the Phoenix Civic plaza and Craig Barrett in a 🐰 suit inside a metal lattice globe with Dirt bikes racing around him."
Yes! I was there! I was a fresh-faced NCG and couldn't believe the money they were burning on events like that!
Wow, we definitely worked in the same circles. I also remember the 25th anniversary party at the Phoenix Civic plaza and Craig Barrett in a 🐰 suit inside a metal lattice globe with Dirt bikes racing around him.
I worked in Chandler A4/T11/Fab6 complex from '93 to '97. Met Andy Grove when he spent a few hours in the "Traveler's Workstation" across from my cubicle. Saw Gordon Moore a few times. Took a leak next to Craig Barrett in the baffroom once. The cafeterias at that time had amazing food.
Back when only results mattered.
I started in 1996 in Chandler. Andy Grove was CEO.
@OP These Days?
The phrase "when Pentium couldn't add up to 5" refers to the Pentium FDIV bug, a famous flaw in early Intel Pentium processors, discovered in 1994.
What was the bug?
The Pentium FDIV bug was a hardware issue affecting the floating-point unit (FPU) of the early Pentium processors. It caused incorrect results when performing certain high-precision floating-point division calculations.
How did it get discovered?
Mathematician Thomas Nicely discovered the bug while working on a complex calculation involving twin primes. His calculation, which relied on the Pentium's floating-point unit, produced an incorrect result, differing from the expected outcome.
Why the reference to "5"?
The bug was caused by missing entries in a lookup table used by the FPU for division. Specifically, five entries were incorrectly set to zero instead of two, according to Medium. This small error in the table could lead to larger errors in the division results, especially with certain numbers.
Impact and Intel's response:
While the bug was relatively rare and only affected a small percentage of calculations, Intel's initial attempt to downplay its severity resulted in significant negative publicity and a public outcry. Intel eventually offered to replace all affected processors, incurring a pre-tax charge of $475 million.
The Pentium FDIV bug is now remembered as a crucial event in Intel's history, prompting a significant shift in their quality assurance processes and how they handled product defects. According to Ken Shirriff's blog, Intel added patchable microcode to later processors, enabling easier bug fixes and improving validation methodologies.
I started during the 486 days. What really blew my mind was working on the Pentium Pro SMP platforms; to see x86 go parallel and write code to test it out. I loved it.
@OP "The good ol' days weren't always good...and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." Billy Joel
There hasn't been a good CEO since the 90s. This is the primary problem.
Yep. Seems like things started to go downhill with Craig Barrett.