3 ms·

You just have no idea what you're talking about. People get killed when things go wrong, and this "oh well other problems are probably worse" attitude is dange

You just have no idea what you're talking about. People get killed when things go wrong, and this "oh well other problems are probably worse" attitude is dangerous. There's no such thing as exact numbers, but there is such a thing about reliable models. The errors introduced by calculating with numerical methods are studied and well understood, a processor not following exactly the rules it's supposed to is an enormous problem. Here's a little introduction to condition numbers and how they're used to understand floating point error introduced in calculations: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~bindel/class/cs6210-f12/notes/lec04.pdf https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~bindel/class/cs6210-f12/notes/le...

charcircuit 2y ago
The FDIV bug is not theoretical. It existed and no one died from it. People love to come up with theoretically how the bug can cause terrible things to happen, but in practice it didn't. The next run of the processor had the fix and the world moved on.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  1. Intel wasn’t very popular for scientific computing in 1994 2. No one was stupid enough to make life critical calculations on Intel after it was discovered and widely publicized You, on the other hand, are suggesting it was no big deal and acting like people doing important work should have just ignored the bug. The reason bugs like this didn’t kill people in a large disaster is that folks with your disposition weren’t in charge of making decisions that would have led to that. They did a recall that cost Intel a billion dollars adjusted for the present. It wasn’t just ignored.
  - charcircuit 2y ago
    >and acting like people doing important work should have just ignored the bug. No, I am acting like the average consumer could have ignored the bug. There wasn't a need to do a mass recall of every chip as the chip would still be fine for most users. Yes, there was a recall for people who needed it to work correctly, but in practice not everyone needs it.

charcircuit 2y ago

The FDIV bug is not theoretical. It existed and no one died from it. People love to come up with theoretically how the bug can cause terrible things to happen, but in practice it didn't. The next run of the processor had the fix and the world moved on.

colechristensen 2y ago
1. Intel wasn’t very popular for scientific computing in 1994 2. No one was stupid enough to make life critical calculations on Intel after it was discovered and widely publicized You, on the other hand, are suggesting it was no big deal and acting like people doing important work should have just ignored the bug. The reason bugs like this didn’t kill people in a large disaster is that folks with your disposition weren’t in charge of making decisions that would have led to that. They did a recall that cost Intel a billion dollars adjusted for the present. It wasn’t just ignored.
- charcircuit 2y ago
  >and acting like people doing important work should have just ignored the bug. No, I am acting like the average consumer could have ignored the bug. There wasn't a need to do a mass recall of every chip as the chip would still be fine for most users. Yes, there was a recall for people who needed it to work correctly, but in practice not everyone needs it.