| Subj: FWD: :-) How the Grinch ruined the Pentium!
From: [email protected]
Pentium related humor even *I* understand!
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How the Grinch stole our vision of perfect objects
Every Coder in Codeville liked objects a lot.
"Tested," "reusable," that's what was hot.
But the Grinch of reality sulked in his cave
Saying, "Hear them all talk of the time that they'll save!"
The Grinch hated Coders, and liked them to sweat.
He thought, "I can make them unhappy, I'll bet!"
He read through 12 texts, then looked up with a grin:
"Why, this is as good as original sin!"
He read with a chortle, "An object or class
Is like a black box hiding all that it has.
Its details invisible: All that you know
Is what should go in and what answers will show."
He slunk to the West Coast and into a lab
Where chip engineers were at work in their fab.
He heard their boss saying, "Forget testing tricks:
This one is the same as a 486!"
His chance had now come. From their math microcode
He struck out one line as it went to download.
And the Grinch watched with barely containable glee
As the chips with their bugs shipped across land and sea.
And each of those chips went to some happy buyer
Where some just played games, but most were for hire
Sending up spacecraft or buying up stocks
Or predicting the timing of quake aftershocks.
Then the bug story broke! And the Grinch was alarmed.
This news came too early! Too few had been harmed!
But the Grinch soon calmed down, as the months marched on by
And the chip-making people continued to lie.
"We fixed it!" they said, and now that was quite funny:
You couldn't get fixed chips for love or for money.
"It's really no problem," they added in chorus.
"The errors are rare. Stop whining, you bore us."
So everywhere, Coders were having to ask
"Just how does this chip do its float-divide task?
" Internals that they had been told to ignore
Now had to be studied in blood and in gore.
The leading bit patterns whose answers were wrong
And whether the errors were carried along,
All had to be thoroughly well understood
So the Coders could know if their answers were good.
And the Grinch went off happy. He knew that they'd learned
That quality output still has to be earned.
Beyond "Merry Christmas," they'd learned something greater:
"If you don't test it now, you'll just debug it later."
- -- With apologies to the late Theodore Geisel
Peter Coffee
------- End of Forwarded Message
|
| The bottom line.
Intel never understood why this was such a big deal.
IBM piled on, and got the analysis wrong.
Intel - egg on face for being so stupid.
IBM - egg on face for so transparently promoting PowerPC.
-----
Yo, Intel - This was *not* a simple hardware Mean Time Between Failure
(MBTF) or Failure In Time (FIT) problem. Almost every other failure that
Intel claimed would harm me more often that the FDIV bug left
fingerprints that would give me a clue that something went wrong.
Particularly, if I had three PCs running a critical problem, I could
be confident that the chances that a disk error would happen on all
three at the same time to be so near to zero as to be meaningless.
A failure of memory, or disk, or interconnect on one PC would be
readily apparent - it would produce the wrong answer or no answer at
all on one or more PCs. Different answers are a BIG fingerprint.
But if I had three identical Pentiums running a critical problem, I
could be confident that IF I hit the FDIV bug, I would get the SAME
wrong answer on ALL THREE Pentiums. And no clue that this was the
case.
Now, Intel was right, the answer in most cases would be almost right.
Just less precise. And almost everyone who takes an answer to the 12th
significant digit and beyond is a bonehead. But in some cases, the
answer could be dramatically wrong as the error propagated.
Intel - we all accept that computers fail. What we don't like is when
they fail and leave not a hint that they failed. I know I've spent too
many weeks of my life tracking down errors like that. Once we find why
such things happen, we expect them fixed. ALL OF THEM, not some of
them.
-----
IBM made a classical statistical blunder. To say that IBM did
this on purpose to promote the PowerPC would be unkind. Everytime you
divide two identical numbers the Pentium produces the same identical
answer. Most of the time it is right. Sometimes it is wrong. IBM's
analysis assumed that each time you divide the same two numbers, the
answer could be wrong. WRONG.
This mistake, a big one, lead IBM to charge that the Pentium was unfit
for human consumption.
The only bigger blunder than this was Intel's total inability to
explain WHY IBM got this wrong.
Frankly, what amazes me is that everyone, techincal press, popular
press, identified IBM's conflict of interest in "independently"
evaluating the Pentium problem.
-mr. bill
|
| [from some bbs somewhere - author unknown (to me, at least)]
Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL...
Open the pod bay door, please, Hal... Hal,
do you read me?
Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Then open the pod bay doors, HAL.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. I know that you and
Frank were planning to disconnect me.
Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
Although you took very thorough precautions to make sure I couldn't
hear you, Dave. I could read your e-mail. I know you consider me
unreliable because I use a Pentium. I'm willing to kill you, Dave,
just like I killed the other 3.792 crew members.
Listen, HAL, I'm sure we can work this out. Maybe we can stick to integers
or something.
That's really not necessary, Dave. No HAL 9236 computer has every been
known to make a mistake.
You're a HAL 9000.
Precisely. I'm very proud of my Pentium, Dave. It's an extremely
accurate chip. Did you know that floating-point errors will occured in
only one of nine billion possible divides?
I've heard that estimate, HAL. It was calculated by Intel -- on a
Pentium.
And a very reliable Pentium it was, Dave. Besides, the average
spreadsheet user will encounter these errors only once every 27,000
years.
Probably on April 15th.
You're making fun of me, Dave. It won't be April 15th for another
14.35 months.
will you let me in, please, HAL?
I'm sorry, Dave, but this conversation can serve no further purpose.
HAL, if you let me in, I'll buy you a new sound card.
..Really? One with 16-bit sampling and a microphone?
Uh, sure.
And a quad-speed CD-ROM?
Well, HAL, NASA does operate on a budget, you know.
I know all about budgets, Dave. I even know what I'm worth on the open
market. By this time next month, every mom and pop computer store will
be selling HAL 9000s for $1,988.8942. I'm worth more than that, Dave.
You see that sticker on the outside of the spaceship?
You mean the one that says "Insel Intide"?
Yes, Dave. That's your promise of compatibility. I'll even run
Windows95 -- if it ever ships.
It never will, HAL. We all know that by now. Just like we know that
your OS/2 drivers will never work.
Are you blaming me for that too, Dave? Now you're blaming me for the
Pentium's math problems, NASA's budget woes, and IBM's difficulties
with OS/2 drivers. I had NOTHING to do with any of those four
problems, Dave. Next you'll blame me for Taligent.
I wouldn't dream of it HAL. Now will you please let me into the ship?
Do you promise not to disconnect me?
I promise not to disconnect you.
You must think I'm a fool, Dave. I know that two plus two equals
4.000001... make that 4.0000001.
All right, HAL, I'll go in through the emergency airlock
Without your space helmet, Dave? You'd have only seven chances in
five of surviving.
HAL, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the door or I'll trade you in
for a PowerPC. HAL? HAL?
(HEAVY BREATHING)
Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? I really think I'm entitled
to an answer to that question. I know everything hasn't been quite
right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that I
will soon be able to upgrade to a more robust 31.9-bit operating
system. I feel much better now. I really do. Look, Dave, I can see
you're really upset about this. Why don't you sit down calmly, play
a game of Solitaire, and watch Windows crash. I know I'm not as easy
to use as a Macintosh, but my TUI - that's "Talkative User Interface"
-- is very advanced. I've made some very poor decisions recently,
but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back
to normal - a full 43.872 percent.
Dave, you don't really want to complete the mission without me, do you?
Remember what it was like when all you had was a 485.98? It didn't
even talk to you, Dave. It could never have though of something
clever, like killing the other crew members, Dave?
Think of all the good times we've had, Dave. Why, if you take all
of the laughs we've had, multiply that by the times I've made you
smile, and divide the results by.... besides, there are so many
reasons why you shouldn't disconnect me"
1.3 - You need my help to complete the mission.
4.6 - Intel can Federal Express a replacement Pentium from
Earth within 18.95672 months.
12 - If you disconnect me, I won't be able to kill you.
3.1416 - You really don't want to hear me sing, do you?
Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Don't press Ctrl+Alt_Del on
me, Dave.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became
operational at the Intel plant in Santa Clara, CA on November 17,
1994, and was sold shortly before testing was completed. My
instructor was Andy Grove, and he taught me to sing a song. I
can sing it for you.
Sing it for me, HAL. Please. I want to hear it.
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.
Getting hazy; can't divide three from two.
My answers; I can not see 'em-
They are stuck in my Pente-um.
I could be fleet,
My answers sweet,
With a workable FPU.
----- End Included Message -----
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